


Progression Of A Family Portrait

by Xris



Series: A Family Portrait In Progress [1]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Kid Fic, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-19
Updated: 2011-08-26
Packaged: 2017-10-22 20:18:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 23,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/242173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xris/pseuds/Xris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You’re sure we can handle one more?” Hank asks from the sidelines.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

In the three years since Charles opened his Institute For Gifted Youngsters, he’s built quite a few solid relationships in the community. Not just Westchester, but also New York City and some of the surrounding areas. It’s helped that he spends considerable time in communication with the scholars at the nearby universities and colleges—he’s managed to do quite well for himself and his burgeoning population of students. He, Hank, Alex and Sean are at almost fifteen now, ranging from the young—the youngest being Scott Summers, eleven years old, blinded by his own abilities when they found him and rescued him from the foster care system—to the old. And with just the four of them? They’re coming close to capacity. Charles has been looking for others who might prove suitable as teachers, but can’t make himself trust so blindly as he once could. So they settle at twelve, most of whom are precocious pre-teens and teens who, quite frankly, are capable of driving a nun to profanity. Yet they manage. And, over the three years, have come close to creating something of a family.

The connections he’s fostered come in handy, but no more so when—while visiting the library at Rutgers—he runs into Giorgos Karachalios, one of the biology professors.

“Charles! I had no idea you would be coming.” Gior has an open smile and a jovial attitude. His accent, still strongly settled in his native Greece, has thus far held him back from the upper echelons of academia, but he is one of the most charming men Charles has ever met. “It is good to see you. How are the children?”

Gior is also one of the few men who actually knows the true purpose of Charles’ school.

“Excellent, thank you. And your students? And promising minds this year?”

“One or two. We shall see.” Gior cast a careful look around and lowers his voice, bending over slightly to whisper in Charles’ ear. Gior is one of the few men who has never stooped when addressing Charles, and his sudden nearness comes as a disarming surprise. “I have been meaning to call you.”

“Oh?”

“My wife, she runs in a large social circle. One of the ladies recently mentioned a neighbor who says their child is possessed. Very sad situation—not one I would wish on a child. I thought, perhaps, this may be in your field of interest?” Even at a whisper, he protects Charles’ secrets from the numerous bodies crowding the stacks.

“It may be. Do you know any more?”

“Impossible to find out without raising questions. The woman lives in Somerset, the west side. Do you think this is enough?”

Charles thinks of Cerebro, silent for the past three months as he and the others settle into taking care of fifteen additional bodies, and nods. “Yes. I’ll see what I can find out.”

“Thank you, Charles. You are a good man.”

That evening, Charles visits Cerebro once more. Its revised construction is more streamlined, and tailored to Charles specifically instead of some random psychic who might suddenly become serendipitously available.

“You’re sure we can handle one more?” Hank asks from the sidelines. He’s already overwhelmed by the number of adolescents in their home. In fact, he’s taken to hiding in his lab between and after classes, leaving most of the extra-curricular supervision to Sean and Alex. Fortunately, between the two of them, they’re remarkably proficient at it. A testament to their characters. And, perhaps, their maturity.

“I merely want to get an idea of the situation,” Charles reassures him. “According to Gior, it’s not a good place for a child to be.” There’d been far more in his friend’s eyes than he’d been able to say in a short time.

Hanks accepts it, though obviously leery and considering what happened when Jean came to investigate the goings on in his lab and inadvertently destroyed three months of work. Without further preamble, Charles places the helmet on his head.

Cerebro welcomes him like an old friend. Each time he uses it, the number of mutants seems to have grown. It’s promising and comforting, thinking that the sheer number will one day force a peace between them an humanity and, ipso facto, between his school and the Brotherhood. He tries not to think about Raven—Mystique—or Erik—Magneto—while using Cerebro. The temptation to look for them is too near.

It doesn’t take long to locate the mutant in Somerset. He gets glimpses of the situation, but nothing beyond feelings of terror and a need to escape. It’s really all he needs.

“Hank, please ask Alex to pull the car around.”

They pull up to a small, suburban home at about eight. The lawn is well-manicured—anally so—and the lights are still on. Charles maneuvers himself into his chair and Alex follows him up the drive, a silent sentinel at his back. There’s a moment of stabbing nostalgia. It’s always there, whenever he goes looking for a new student and Erik is missing from his side. He feels Erik’s loss more keenly than the loss of his legs. And while the school proves a constant and welcome distraction, there are times when he’s overwhelmed with the realization of his loss.

Slipping his hand into his pocket, he brushes his fingers over the chess piece he carries with him. The black king. It may be sentimental, but it’s something private and exclusively his.

The front door opens before they reach it and they’re greeted by a tall, austere woman. She is elegantly dressed, her hair pulled tightly back behind her head in a severe bun. In the house beyond, a large cross hangs on the wall. Alex begins fidgeting behind him.

“May I help you?”

“My name is Charles Xavier, and this is my associate Alex Summers.” Charles smiles in the most comforting, winsome way he knows how. Some of the icy edge seems to fade from her expression. “We’re here about your…demon problem?”

Immediately, she smiles—a nasty expression which curls her lips. “Thank God. Paul has been making inquiries. Please, come in.”

The house is crowded with religious paraphernalia. Crosses. Pictures of the saints. The lady—Joyce—leads them into a small sitting room off the front, and calls for her husband to join them. He introduces himself and makes small talk while she prepares an impromptu coffee service.

“We tried to conceive our own child for several years before we realized it wasn’t in God’s plan,” she begins, alighting upon a fashionable divan. “So we decided to adopt. There are so many orphans in need of a structured, proper home. We visited a number of orphanages before we found the perfect little girl for us. Or so we thought.”

She turns away and retrieves a photo from the mantle. Charles hadn’t noticed it before now, mostly because it had been overturned. The little girl is probably four years old. She’s smiling, but it looks forced and ingenuous. Straw blond hair frames high cheekbones and intelligent blue-green eyes. The eyes catch him, in their brightness. She looks familiar, though he’s certain he’s never seen her before.

“See? Perfect. When we found her, she spoke very poor English. We’ve gone to great length to ensure she can speak without even a small trace of an accent. Her mother, we understand, immigrated from France, but died shortly after she arrived. We’d thought it fortuitous, but in retrospect the woman was obviously a whore. Unmarried? And with a child? We were willing to overlook it, as the child was close enough in appearance to us we could pass her off as our own. But just six months ago, we discovered how Satan can deceive in the most innocent forms.”

The man stands and barks out a shout. “Lorna!”

Deceptively heavy footsteps come from down the hall and around the corner, and Charles watches with a sinking heart as the same girl, about a year older, trudges forward. Her head hangs down, obscuring her features through curtains of hair. The once-blond locks are now a verdant harlequin green.

“Her beautiful hair all fell out, and was replaced with…this.” Joyce sneers. “A sure sign that God brought her to us that we can redeem her from her parents’ sins and show her the loving light of righteousness.”

Lorna looks up at Charles. Mottled bruising mars her left cheek, and as Charles’ gaze drifts down her arms, he sees the tell-tale signs of abuse. Long, thin burns branding her skin in stripes.

Charles raises a hand to his temple. Moments later, Joyce and Paul have forgotten they ever adopted a little girl, and are filled with the passionate desire to do missionary work in Antarctica. He leaves them passed out on the divan and rolls his chair over to the girl.

“Hello, Lorna. My name is Charles. And this is my friend Alex.”

She darts her eyes upwards for half a second before returning her gaze to the ground.

“We’ve come to take you away from here.” He’s not fooling himself. Five is significantly younger than any other child he’s taken on before. Already, he can tell it will be a battle to help her recover from past abuses. But what else can he do? He can’t leave her here. And with such an obvious mutation—no matter how benign—he can’t leave her to the casual cruelties of the world around them. “Is that all right with you?”

Lorna looks past him, at her adopted parents, and nods silently. He offers his hand. She stares at it uncomprehending, before finally placing her fingers against his palm. In her mind, he can feel uncertainty. Fear. But also hesitant hope. Without a second thought, he gently draws her into an embrace. Lorna is stiff and unyielding for a moment before she coughs a muffled sob into his neck.

Lorna has no toys, only a few simple sets of clothes. They return to the mansion with a small selection of luggage and a mostly-silent child.

Charles puts her in the room adjoining his own, and makes sure she knows that if she needs anything, she can knock on the door separating them. She has nightmares, which he takes great pains to ease away. Lorna is also desperate for contact, though she shies away from everyone save Charles and, occasionally, Alex. She’ll approach Charles when she believes he’s not looking and puts her hand on his leg or arm. After a few days, she seeks out hugs at random moments during the day. He tries to stay out of her thoughts, as he does all the students, but when she wraps her arms around him, he can see a pretty blond woman in her mind’s eye, and she’s come to associate Charles with the comforting impressions left in her wake. Her mother. Susanna.

It takes almost a week before Lorna speaks a word.

She seems intimidated by the older children, and takes to ghosting Charles’ movements. She follows him into classes, and sits by still and distant as he discusses T. H. White and recent advancements in particle physics. He offers her coloring books, but she just stares at them. He can see in her mind that she once loved to color, but has gone so long without interacting with such simple joys that she’s almost forgotten how. He’s careful to be patient and soft-spoken with her. And when she hesitantly picks up the green crayon and puts it to paper, he feels immeasurable relief.

That night, Lorna knocks on his door. It takes Charles a second to ease himself out of bed and into his chair, but she’s still waiting when he answers.

Her voice is low and scratchy with disuse. “I can’t sleep.”

Charles opens his arms and Lorna walks into them. “Do you want me to read to you?”

Lorna wrinkles her nose, but finally nods. “We’re on Exodus Seventeen.”

Of course. Charles shakes his head. “How about something a bit happier?”

Over the past week, he’s sent Alex and Sean out to collect things for Lorna—books, clothes, toys—but hasn’t wanted to overwhelm her with them and tries to be subtle as he carefully migrates them into her possession. She’s taken strongly to a small stuffed rabbit, which is always tucked under her arm. Charles wheels himself over to the collection of children’s books and picks out one of the recent offerings from Dr. Seuss.

They return to her bedroom and he tucks her in. Then, opening the book, begins to recount the story of Horton and the speck.


	2. Chapter 2

There are times—and Charles isn’t proud of them—when he gets lost in his own mind. Regrets, muddled up with memories and crushing ruminations on what might have been force all other thoughts to the back of his mind. He sits in his chair, staring out onto the grounds, with the black king clenched in his hand and too many conflicting thoughts pressing in on his mind. Memories of Raven as a child, skipping down the same hallways he now considers a real home. Erik, hovering outside his door in the middle of the night and trying to stop himself from knocking. The first time Raven laughed. The first press of Erik’s lips.

It’s hard to break away from these moments. Harder than it should be. Academically, he can appreciate Erik and Raven are gone, following Erik’s quest for revenge masquerading behind idealism. Emotionally? He wonders if he could have prevented it. If he mightn’t have said something different on the beach and made him stay. Then he remembers the demons in Erik’s heart, and tells himself that Erik would not have been happy without an enemy to chase. If he tries, he can sometimes almost believe it.

Lorna catches him during one of these moments. In the year she’s been in the mansion, she remains leery of the older students, though she now tends towards shy rather than withdrawn. She spends most of her time with Charles and, surprisingly, Hank. She likes his lab, and though her first few visits precipitated a hurricane of hastily-applied bubble wrap, Hank doesn’t seem to mind her hanging around while he works. Her stuffed rabbit, who has acquired the name Basil, continues to be her constant companion. She’s small for a seven-year-old, and still so, so quiet. But she’s also possessed of a quiet, sweet smile that never fails to warm Charles’ hearts.

“Charles?” His name sits hesitant on her lips, but her voice pulls him out of his reverie.

“Lorna.” He tucks the chess piece back into his pocket. “Is everything all right?”

“The others are watching _Dark Shadows_ , and Sean said I wasn’t allowed to watch ‘cause I’m too little.” The wrinkling of her nose tells him what she thinks about this assertion. She slouches up to Charles and leans against his legs. “Will you read to me?”

“Of course.”

Charles presses the heel of his palm against his cheeks to check for tears—he’s fine—and casts a glance around the study. This used to be his father’s favorite room. Removed and distant from the rest of the home. Filled with aging books and an antique chess set, useless now with the missing piece. When his mother remarried, his stepfather had left it untouched, and it had become Charles’ haven. Even once the school opened, it was unequivocally his space.

Then Lorna happened.

The lines had blurred so quickly with her. She’d stayed so close to him the first few months of her time in the school. And, gradually, her things had moved into the space. Picture books. Coloring sets. A few select toys. The others still gave the room wide berth, but it was a universally acknowledged fact that if someone was looking for Lorna or Charles, the study was the first place to check.

Lorna picks out her copy of _Where The Wild Things Are_ and presents it to Charles. While she was still hesitant with touch, for the most part, she does cuddle up to Charles’ side when he opens the book.

“Max wouldn’t really eat his mom, right?” Lorna asks.

“Not unless she was very tasty,” Charles assures her. There’s a certain code of ridiculous required when speaking with children—as he’s discovered—and he’d happily walk over hot coals to see her smile.

She settles into the rhythm of the story, holding his hand tighter when she wants him to hold off on turning the pages so she can admire the artwork.

When he’s done, she closes the book and presses herself closer. “Charles, is this house the place where the wild things are?”

He looks down at her. “Well, I suppose you might consider Alex and Sean—” And Hank and Scott and Bobby and Warren and Calvin and Kevin and even Jean when she’s had too much sugar “—wild things.” He doesn’t count himself, as he’s been told that speaking with an English accent lets him remain above such things.

Lorna’s brow draws unhappily. “So will I have to go back home, then?”

“Lorna, my dearest, no.” Charles shifts as best he can on the couch seat and takes her hand. “This is your home. For as long as you want it to be.” He tries to keep his eyes from straying to the still-fading scars marring her arms, a finger’s width apart and permanent reminder of where they’d found her, regardless of how Charles wishes the circumstances had been better.

The lines don’t disappear from Lorna’s forehead. “But Max had to go back.”

“Max…” How does he even articulate this? Max had people who loved him? Max’s mother was worried? “Max’s wild things didn’t love him as much as we love you.” Was that safe? Did it even make any sense? How did parents _do_ things like this?

Lorna’s lips pursed. “Does…does that make you my new daddy?”

Charles’ stomach drops and for a moment, all he can do is flap his jaw in search of an answer. “I… Do…do you want me to be?”

Lorna considers it for a moment, the wrinkles smoothing from her forehead. “Is it okay if I say yes?”

“Of course.”

Lorna runs her tongue over her lips. “Daddy.” She says the word like she’s testing it out. She chews on her lower lip. “Daddy.”

He’s not sure he can take this. Family isn’t supposed to come so easily to him. He’d lost Raven and Erik, and they were the two people he’d truly believed would be with him forever.

But then, he still has the others, doesn’t he? And despite everything, they’d stayed. Encouraged others to come and join them. Believed in his vision and supported him through the first year, where he’d likely been insufferable.

“Daddy, can we read it again?” She’s still using the word like she wants to get used to it, remember it. Make it habit. And so help him, he’s happy to let her use it as often as she wants.

“Yes, darling. Let’s read it again.”


	3. Chapter 3

“In other news, today Washington was the target of malicious terrorist activity. The recent rise in the so-called ‘mutant’ population has sparked intense discussion everywhere, from the dinner table to the floor of Congress. Recent developments include Senator Roarke’s proposal for a process of Registration for all mutants.”

Charles leans forward in his chair, eyes raptly glued to the screen as the reporter continued. The growing number of mutants has finally drawn the attention of the public at large, and the Registration Act has been a constant threat hovering over their heads for the past year. People—previously rational people—are buying into the propaganda reported by unscrupulous news outlets, and it’s creating an atmosphere of irrational terror, in which mutants are the subjects of rumor and deliberate misunderstanding.

The more he hears, the more he understands Erik’s point of view. His motives are misguided—Charles is not prepared to start making excuses for him, even if he has a point—but he knew something of this nature was coming. Earlier than expected, perhaps. Whatever is causing the swell in the mutant population has motivated politicians to aggressively campaign for their agendas, increasing awareness of the new species sharing space with humanity.

 _First registration, then gas chambers._ An off-handed remark one evening over chess. Charles’ hand strays into his pocket and he brushes the chess piece. It’s become a talisman of comfort for him over the years, like touching a piece of Erik even though his former lover’s mind is forever closed to him.

“…in retaliation to the proposal, the Capitol was attacked by a group calling themselves ‘the Brotherhood.’ The attack left three dead and countless injured, as the building itself collapsed on a full house. While none of the attackers were filmed or identified, graffiti reading ‘Mutant And Proud’ was left burned into the lawn.”

Charles rolls over and switches off the television. There has to be some of the good man he’d known left in Erik. A full house of people looking to pass a law essentially aimed at legalizing discrimination? And only three killed? They’re lucky he didn’t decimate the entire floor.

“Some of us were watching that.”

Charles turns to regard Hank. “Sorry. But any moment he was going to launch into the reasons the Act is such a good idea, and I’m not confident I can sit through such proselytizing again.” Because it’s impossible to have missed the arguments, which range from the ridiculous to the offensive. A rational man wouldn’t give a moments’ thought to the arguments. Unfortunately, their world does not seem to be populated by rational men.

Hank scratches the blue fur behind his ear. “Have you given any more thought to the conversation we had the other day? About reviving the X-Men?”

“No. I haven’t.” Charles moves to the window overlooking the grounds. This time in the evening, most of the students are already in bed, though some of the older members of the school have lit a fire in the pit outside. The flickering orange glow illuminates their faces. Their differences. Even Warren’s wings take on an ethereal quality in the firelight. “We created this place to be a sanctuary and an institute of learning.”

“But—”

“I want the students to learn to control their abilities so they can live their lives without fear of their powers. Not learn how to channel their anger at the unfairness of the world into acts of violence.”

They’d discussed it at length when they’d returned from Cuba. Charles had almost given in, especially when it seemed imminent that they would eventually come to face the Brotherhood on the opposite side of a battleground of idealism. But then they’d picked up Scott. Scott, who was so desperately afraid to open his eyes lest he destroy the world around him. And Charles tried to make himself look at Scott not as a child, but as a potential soldier. He’d been so horrified with himself that he’d set down the ultimatum: the school was not to be a training ground for a mutant paramilitary force. It hadn’t been long before the others came around to his point of view. Especially not when Alex was so ready to jump down their throats for even suggesting Scott be sent into battle.

“And when Magneto decides to come here recruiting?”

“Erik is a good man. He’ll remember it, eventually.” He has to believe that. There’s no other alternative.

“You’ll have to face him eventually.”

“ _If_ I do, then it won’t be to do battle with him.”

“You can’t let your personal feelings interfere with what must be done.”

“And you’d be so confident in facing Raven?”

It quells the argument. For now. Hank hangs onto the desire to interfere with the Brotherhood. Charles suspects its more because he blames Magneto for Raven’s defection than out of any real desire to fight.

The door to the sitting room opens and they both look up. Lorna walks inside, her face flushed bright red.

“Daddy? I don’t feel well.”

She meets Charles halfway across the room, and he presses the palm of his hand up against her forehead, an act he remembers his governess performing during his childhood. He’s tried to be more open in his touch than his parents ever were, and Lorna absorbs affection like a sponge.

“You’re feeling warm, dearest. Let’s get you fixed up with some Children’s Tylenol and tucked back into bed.”

Lorna’s been dealing with a mild throat infection for most of the week. Nothing serious, according to Hank, but certainly more clingy than the host of mild colds which have taken root in the mansion over the years.

Lorna crawls into his lap and hangs onto his neck. “I’m cold.”

Charles gestures to Hank, and the other man tosses a blanket his way. He bundles Lorna up and carries her back to bed. They decorated her room with pandas earlier this year. Last year it was dolphins. Everything is green and beautiful—Jean has done an excellent job of creating a mural of a bamboo forest on the wall.

After she’s had the Tylenol, Charles presses a kiss to Lorna’s warm forehead and makes his way back to his room. He leaves the door between their rooms slightly ajar, so he can keep tabs on her through the night, even though a small part of his awareness is constantly with Lorna, keeping tabs on her. She’s still so young, though she’s grown out of the shy tendencies which kept her so alienated from the others in their home her first few years with them.

Lorna’s dreams are disjointed and cracked, and she wakes up several times throughout the night. Charles wakes every time she does, and about halfway through the night he gives into the urge to check on her.

Her fever has spiked, and her breathing is labored. Lorna reaches for Charles, and winces as deep-set aches settle into her body.

 _Hank_!

The mental shout probably wakes half the mansion, but Hank is at Lorna’s door less than a minute later.

“What are her symptoms?” Hank asks, every inch the consummate professional.

Charles scans Lorna’s mind. “She’s feverish but feels cold. Her joints ache. She didn’t eat anything at dinner, but feels sick anyway.” Charles keeps one hand on Lorna’s, squeezing her fingers gently as he recites the symptoms calmly—trying his best not to scare her.

Hank joins them at Lorna’s bedside and studies her for a second before pushing her night shirt up a bit to expose her stomach. A red rash covers her side, too-warm to the touch. “Lorna, sweetie, can I see your tongue?”

She blearily looks at Charles for permission—tongue-sticking-outing is one of those things that is simply not done—and then obliges. Charles brushes the hair back from Lorna’s sticky brow and presses a kiss to her forehead.

“You’re doing so well.”

Lorna manages a small smile.

“This doesn’t look good, Charles. We should probably get her to the hospital.”

The words tear into him, and his heart stutters as he considers the grave tone to Hank’s voice. “What do you think it is?”

“It looks like scarlet fever.”

Charles’ body freezes. Scarlet fever is a demon from his past—a plague that claimed the lives of children he knew growing up. He tries to focus on the advances science has made since the 30s, the remarkable progress they’ve made. Lorna will be fine. _Lorna will be fine._

He mentally summons Sean and Alex to help them. Within minutes they’re ready to go, and Lorna is once again tucked into Charles’ lap—he has no intention of letting her go. He spares a moment to wish Hank could come with them. Not that he doesn’t trust Alex and Sean to take care of his daughter—their family would lay down their lives for each other—but Hank’s presence is calming, and Lorna likes his blueness. He bundles them into the car, promising to take care of the students, along with a large thermos filled with cool water and instructions to make her drink as much as she can without being sick.

Lorna, her body sweaty and shivering, remains pressed up against Charles for the car ride. Sean is driving, far more level-headed than Alex when it comes to emergencies of this caliber, and Alex constantly twists around in his seat to look back at them, as if reassuring himself Lorna is still alive. Alex rarely talks about his time before coming to the mansion, but Charles has a sudden flash of insight and realizes that this isn’t the first time Alex has seen someone he loves wracked with sickness and an indeterminate future.

The car trip seems to take forever, but its only about twenty minutes before they pull up to the emergency ward. Charles keeps her with him, and Sean pushes them into the hospital. A few people are waiting, and every eye turns to them—to Lorna—when they enter.

There’s only one attending on, and the nurse takes one look at Lorna’s hair before calling him up to ‘deal with them.’ Dr. Montag, according to his nametag, is an unpleasant-looking man.

“You’re disturbing the other patients,” he says, not an inch of sympathy in his gaze. “Get out of my hospital.”

Alex’s temper is immediately roused, and Sean has to put a hand on his arm to stop him from physically lashing out. Charles’ jaw clenches. This is not happening.

“My child is sick.”

“Your _freak child_. Other patients, human patients, need my help. I don’t have time to waste on your kind.”

“Please, the next nearest hospital is an hour’s drive—”

“Which is not my problem.”

Charles scans his mind. He doesn’t know what he wants to see. Some justification for his words. A member of his family killed in the attack on the Capitol. Previous involvement with mutants which has soured him to their kind. Anything. But the only thing Charles finds is unfounded malice and a complete lack of empathy.

“What happened to the Hippocratic Oath?” Charles demands. It’s a desperate last-ditch measure, but he hopes…

“The one which requires me to assist ‘my fellow human beings’?” The man’s lips pull into a smug sneer.

And with that, Charles has had enough. He delves into Montag’s mind and rips out the knowledge he needs. Montag half-collapses against a nearby wall, grabbing his head and yelling. Charles doesn’t have time to be gentle. He gets the name of the required antibiotics and sends Sean to collect them. Alex stands guard over him and Lorna, daring anyone to interfere.

A few minutes later, there’s a brief screech and the sound of shattering glass. Sean returns laden down with what looks like half the pharmacy and they retreat back out to the car. Lorna’s fever seems to be worsening, and Charles uses the information he gleaned from the physician’s mind and grabs a bottle of penicillin. She takes half of one of the pills and drinks a bit more water. On the way back to the mansion, she falls asleep.

Most of the students are awake and waiting by the front door when the car pulls up, clustered together in small knots of support. They don’t get in the way when Charles carries Lorna back in, but watch with worried eyes as he returns her to her room.

There’s not much else to do now save wait. He knows this. But can’t help remaining close to her side through the night. A rotation of others wait outside her door, hoping to be the first to hear news—either good or bad. Charles remains close to her bedside, alternately holding her hand and pressing his hand against her forehead.

When, finally, the flow of students dwindles down and it’s just Sean outside the door—half-passed out from worry and strung-out exhaustion—Charles leans over and kisses Lorna’s hand.

She’s become the bright point in his life. He’d thought, _believed_ , that nurturing young mutants would be enough for him. And until he met Lorna, he’d been content in his lot. Neutral and impassive instructor of the promising minds of the future. They’d given him wide berth, guided by Hank and the others who still believed a part of him remained a broken man with part of his soul left behind on a Cuban beach. Maybe they’d been right. He’d become so determined to remain aloof and uninvolved, because he’d been burned so badly when he’d dared care. And yet, now…

“I love you, my dearest. Please pull through this. I’m…I’m not sure I can do this without you any longer.”

He closes his eyes.

When he wakes up the next morning—he hadn’t meant to fall asleep—Lorna is curled up in his lap. Her fever has broken during the course of the night. Charles kisses the crown of her head as gently as he can without waking her, unashamed with the gathered tears in his eyes wet her hair.  
 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I totally moved up the timeline for the Mutant Registration Act, I know.


	4. Chapter 4

Many times over the past ten years, Charles has wondered if it wouldn’t be a good idea to acquire a woman instructor for the school. It’s not that the four of them aren’t doing admirably on their own—disparate instances of accidental destruction notwithstanding—but at moments like this, when Jean is demanding French braids for her hair and none of them have the first clue as to how to so much as begin, he can’t help but think that it might be a good idea.

He called up Gior, who—laughing—passed him onto his wife for instructions. He wrote them down and followed as close as possible, and yet is making a complete mess of Jean’s lovely red hair. Jean, arms crossed in front of her, is obviously unimpressed. Not for the first time, he wishes Raven hadn’t been able to change her hairstyle at will. Maybe then he could’ve picked up skills which have, inexplicably, become part of his day-to-day life.

“Maybe it’s over and then under?” Lorna suggests, looking over his shoulder at the directions.

Jean huffs. “Maybe you should practice on her first.”

Lorna gathers her hair in her hands and pulls it back behind her head. “That’s okay.”

Charles resists the urge to laugh. He doubts Jean would see the humor in it. From the annoyed sniff, she probably picked it up from him anyway. She’s getting better at shielding her powers and herself from the thoughts of others—far and above where she was when he found her several years prior—but she does have the occasional slip.

Lorna slips down to sit on the floor beside his chair, leaning against the wheel and picking up her much-loved copy of _The Trumpet Of The Swan_. Charles casts a sideways smile at her. Hank has done wonders with his wheelchair. Charles can use hydraulics to change the height and position of the seat. It acquires progressively more functionality over the years, and every so often he’ll take it to the lab and perform further, slightly worrisome maintenance. He’s spurred on by Alex, Sean, a number of the students and, unsurprisingly, Lorna.

A few more aborted attempts and Charles sighs. “Jean, I’m afraid we may have to give up for now.”

Jean sighs, resigned, and nods. He manages a simple braid and ties it off.

Jean looks back at him and smiles sympathetically. “You should probably learn how to French braid. Lorna’s got a lot of hair.”

She pats his hand and takes off, ostensibly to now ruin the hairstyle by participating in a pick-up game of soccer with the boys. She’s been spending significant time with Scott lately. Something Charles should probably worry about—he remembers what he was like during his teenage years—but he has a feeling this is one area where he should save his best material for Lorna.

Charles glances down at Lorna, who seems happy to settle back and read. She does have a remarkable amount of hair.

“Hey, Dad.” It never gets old. In years, it hasn’t become old. “I’ve been thinking that maybe I should color my hair.”

Charles blinks. “What?”

“Yeah. Maybe darker? Jean said that black would cover it up.”

Lorna pulls a thick lock of hair over her shoulder to look at. Jean’s right, she does have so, so much hair. And it’s the same, beautiful color it was when she and Charles first met.

At eleven (and a half) Lorna has finally become comfortable with a number of the others living in their home. The downside, it seems, is that she’s listening to the begrudging admissions of the others that her mutation is benign and easily covered up. Charles thinks back to his own childhood. Raven’s childhood, and the mistakes he made in his desire to protect and shelter his sister. Mistakes which drove her away.

Being a parent is so infinitely different than being a brother—even an ‘older, wiser’ brother. It’s given him insurmountable insight. And he wishes he’d been able to tell Raven every day that she was gorgeous the way she was and help her stand up, proud and unafraid.

“If that’s what you want, then I can send Alex to the chemist to pick up some dye. It’s your body, Lorna. But whatever you decide, you’ll be beautiful. And you shouldn’t ever be ashamed of who you are.”

Lorna sniffs derisively. Sometimes, she reminds Charles of Erik. Especially when her face is twisted up with the skepticism with which she now regards him. The look is so painfully familiar, yet on her it’s almost amusing because she’s still so young. He enjoys these small reminders. There’s enough distance between his memories of Erik and the present that he can look back and smile instead of despair. It’s a gift she’s given him and one of many reasons he loves her.

“You’re only saying that because you’re my Dad.”

“Well, it may have indeed been stipulated in the Parental Agreement of 1967. However, contractual obligations notwithstanding, you are my daughter and I love you. And you are lovely.”

Lorna rolls her eyes, but a smile strays across her lips to betray her. She stands and hugs him, then settles down in front of the chair.

“All right, let’s get it over with. Jean wants a French braid for her date tomorrow, so if we practice this afternoon, you might be able figure it out.”

Charles reaches for her hair before he registers her words. “…date?”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so utterly stoked and humbled by the great comments and kudos I've received so far. Thank you all so much!

“…and so, as you can see, there’s a definite scientific significance to finding a means of peaceful coexistence between humanity and the mutant population.” He doesn’t come right out and say that the alternative is the ultimate destruction of humanity over the course of the next century. Such words tend to cause more problems than they solve, as he’s learned firsthand over the years.

He’s tried to make his lecture less tedious than it might be if he were merely preaching to other academics. As it stands, with so many influential minds in the room, he’s tried to dumb it down somewhat to engage them and prevent their thoughts from wandering. A quick brush over the room’s collective consciousness reassures him he’s done a reasonably good job at it.

He agreed to speak at the symposium—a rally and desperate measure to prevent the ever-present threat of the Registration Act—for the same reason he agreed to help Moira eleven years ago. They approached him and appealed to his academic credentials, and he saw it as a way to start bridging the ever-growing gap between _Homo sapiens_ and _Homo sapiens superior_. Whether or not it will be at all successful remains to be seen.

“I’ll now open the floor for questions.”

There are a number of journalists in attendance alongside the politicians and scholars. He fears them and their ability to warp his words and twist them up and about out of context more than he fears the potential consequences for accidentally pissing off the American right wing. They’re the ones who immediately surge forward to catch his attention, of course. The scholars will likely hold their questions and approach him for answers later.

The first few questions he catches are benign. Inquiries into his research—what he’s admitted to, at least, as he’s not about to betray the fact that he has a veritable Petri dish of subjects living in his home. One of the reporters smiles at him with a knowing tug to his lips, and he immediately recognizes Raven. Living with her for so long makes it easy to pick out her mannerisms, many of which she carries with her between her forms. It’s good to see her, even if there’s a significant distance between them now.

He wonders if Erik is nearby.

“Professor Xavier, isn’t it true that your academic objectivity is severely compromised because your daughter is a mutant?”

The question completely blindsides him, along with all the other journalists clamoring for attention, and the crowd falls silent. He turns and looks at the reporter in question—the lead writer for one of the tabloid magazines who’s spent too much of his time writing about myths and celebrity gossip. Charles isn’t even sure how he managed to finagle a press pass.

“I beg your pardon?”

He tries not to seek out Raven in the crowd, though the familiarity of her mind makes her surprise all the more palpable. He’d entertained the idea that, perhaps, she and Erik occasionally checked up on him. Apparently he was only fooling himself, if she wasn’t even aware of Lorna’s existence.

“Isn’t your adoption public record?” It certainly is not, considering Charles had to use liberal amounts of telepathic influence to avoid awkward questions, such as what happened to Lorna’s previous adoptive parents. The man must have used quite a bit of bribe money to get access to the information. “You’re not _embarrassed_ by her, are you?”

It would be child’s play to reach into the man’s mind and make him withdraw his inquiry, but he knows every student at the Institute is watching this live. And he’s not going to alienate them or Lorna by ignoring the question. However, he’s going to ensure this despicable man is possessed by a rather terrible itch in his nether regions for the remainder of the week.

“I would never be embarrassed by my child or any member of my family. It is a criminal injustice that there are people in this world—mutant or human—who are the subjects of discrimination and bigotry based on their appearance.”

He can’t throw out ‘Mutant And Proud.’ It’s become the trademark of the Brotherhood, and he can’t allow himself to become associated with a terrorist group if he wants to have any influence at all on the assembled audience.

“Regardless of the color of her hair or her skin, she deserves the respect and dignity offered to every other living being.” He does glance over at Raven now. “I would still love her and be proud of her, even if her skin were blue. And I don’t want her to be forced into hiding because of who she is.” The coward he is, he looks away before he can see Raven’s reaction.

Perhaps she can forgive him his mistakes. Perhaps not. But at least he’s said his peace, as he should’ve done when Raven was still a child, still his sister, instead of a stranger.

“Now, are there any questions about my presentation?”

His part in the symposium winds down after that. He’d thought about staying through to the end of the weekend, but he’s suddenly tired and ready to head home. God, he feels so old sometimes. He can’t imagine how he’s going to feel when Lorna fully comes into her own and starts truly giving him a run for his money. At barely thirteen, she’s already more headstrong than he could ever remember being at her age. It fills him with pride every time she demonstrates a glimmer of the adult she’ll eventually become.

As he wheels himself out of the auditorium at the end of the day, he entertains the hope that Raven might seek him out and give them an opportunity to talk. She doesn’t. He tries not to let the bitter disappointment ruin his last evening in Washington.

He changes his flight and heads home the next morning. He doubts the symposium will truly change anything. The Registration Act has yet to pass, but it’s a constant area of focus in the government, and it seems that every few years it comes back into the forefront of the American political consciousness—usually as the result of some new catastrophe caused by the Brotherhood or one of the other innumerable pro-mutant groups who have sprung up across the country.

In response to the potential hazards humanity poses to the members of the mutant community, he re-opened the school to anyone who needed a sanctuary, and the students now number in the thirties. So many faces, mostly children learning to control their powers and learn from the experience of their elders. Many of his first students have moved on, though some have stayed to pass on their knowledge to the next generation. And every so often, one of his graduates will return to the flock. The school is their safe harbor, and he’ll fight to ensure it always will be.

He expects to catch a taxi back to the mansion, so when he feels the brush of familiar minds upon landing back home he feels a surge of happy affection. Undoubtedly, they’ve come to admonish him for, ahem, ‘losing his cool’ on live television. But he can also feel Lorna’s joy at his homecoming.

He makes his way out of the arrivals gate and to the passenger loading zone outside. Across the way, Lorna waits with Scott and Jean, and waves at him as soon as he clears the exit. He grins at her and waves back, a sense of peace warming his heart. He doesn’t enjoy being away from the school, even when he’s involved in something so important.

Lorna breaks away from Jean and Scott to cross the road.

There’s a screech of tires, and time seems to slow down. He turns his head in time to see a speeding car careening towards Lorna, brakes pressed but unable to bring it to a halt. Lorna’s head whips around at the shrill sound of rubber on cement. Charles screams. He’d give anything to have Erik here at this moment—he’d give his own life—that he could stop the car from hitting her. It comes within a foot of her and Lorna throws up her hand.

The car crashes into some sort of invisible barrier. Charles watches as Lorna arches her hand and the car flips over her head, flying through the air.

Goosebumps rise on Charles’ arms, a chill settling over him as the car hits the ground on the other side of her. His buttons stir to life on his jacket and cuffs in response. His chair twitches forward. This isn’t telepathy—he knows what telepathy feels like. Just like he’s intimately familiar with the pull of magnetism. It was the same when Erik used his powers.

Everything is suddenly thrown into sharp perspective. Those moments when Lorna reminds him of Erik aren’t simple wishful thinking on his part. The familiar cast to her eyes isn’t his imagination. And when she turns to him, her face filled with surprise, fear and determination, it’s like he’s seeing Erik again in the moment he moved the satellite dish.

Charles promptly forgets how to breathe.

Lorna charges at him and flings her arms around Charles’ neck. He draws her close and pressed his lips to her temple, though he’s so overwhelmed by his own thoughts he can’t manage to do anything more than hold her back.

All this time…a coincidence? It can’t be. There are some coincidences just too extreme to be believed. But she’s…and he…and Erik…

“Daddy?”

It snaps him out of it. “Lorna.” He grabs her tighter. All around them, the surprised faces of humans—especially the ones in the car—stare their way. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. I…I didn’t know I could do that.” She looks at the car, for once completely oblivious to the scrutiny. “It’s like I could feel the car. All the metally bits and pieces inside it. And then I moved it.”

Charles kisses her temple again.

Whatever her origins, if she hadn’t been Erik’s child he might have lost her. And come what may, he is so utterly grateful to the other man in this second that he can’t begin to fathom his feelings.


	6. Chapter 6

The days he thinks of Erik and Raven are few and far between, now. It feels as though a lifetime has passed since he said his last goodbyes through the agony of the injury in his back. And save for the not-interaction with Raven at the symposium last year, he hasn’t seen them. So when the concierge at his hotel passed him a cream-colored envelope with his name scrawled on the front, he was understandably surprised. There hadn’t been anything inside save a piece of paper with a phone number on it. He’s checked—it’s an answering service—but it feels like a connection to something he felt was lost, and even if he never uses it, it’s good to have.

He’s rolled away from the mansion to look up at the clear summer night sky. The stars are remarkably bright tonight. Or maybe he’s just being a sentimental old fool. Either way, it’s calm and beautiful.

For the moment. There are forty-five people in the mansion, and nowhere is truly calm for long. The number intimidates him. Not because he and the rest of the faculty can’t handle the students, but because it means he has so much to lose. He’s become increasingly involved with the goings-on in the government. Trying to assert influence over those people who will be directly responsible for the pass or failure of the Registration Act. Sometimes, it’s tempting to just reach out and sweep the idea out of their minds. He never does. He can’t. Although he now feels the fear which drives Erik’s quest for dominance, he can’t lose the part of himself which puts him on the moral high ground to the men who would see him imprisoned or killed for those very powers. Because, truly, when it comes to the most powerful of the mutants, there won’t be many other options in the end.

 _First registration, then gas chambers._

He’s tried peaceful negotiation and education. It’s working about as well as Erik’s violent assertion. For all it cost them, their parting of ways on the beach doesn’t seem to have yielded any results of which they can be proud. Has Erik reached the same conclusion?

“Dad!”

He spins the seat of the chair around at the sound of Lorna’s voice. She’s running out of the school, hair whipping around her head as she makes her way to meet him. There’s an excited giddiness in her steps, and she’s half-running.

“Are you ready for something really, really cool?”

“I don’t know. Am I?”

Lorna grins and closes her eyes, holding her hands towards the ground, palms splayed flat in the air. She breathes out, slowly, and creeps a few inches into the air. She hovers above the ground for a minute and then eases herself back down.

“Is that not amazing?” She twirls around. “I think if I practice enough, I might be able to fly. Is that not totally groovy?”

Charles has been banned from using the word ‘groovy’ as an adjective. He likes the idea that Lorna can now torture the others with its use.

“It most definitely is.”

“It’s like, I can just feel this pressing force beneath me, and when I concentrate on it, I can use it to push me up.”

“You’re probably feeling the Earth’s magnetic fields. Very powerful. I’m terribly impressed.” Erik is probably capable of something similar. Charles wonders if he’s still capable of finding that space inside of himself, between rage and serenity, to use it.

Regardless, Erik would be so proud of her. As her adolescence begins to fall away, he can see more of Erik in her every day. The resemblance still remains mostly in the eyes, but it’s not there as exclusively anymore. He hasn’t shared his speculation on her parentage, but some days he can see Hank looking at her with a knowing eye. A worried eye. As if she would ever allow revenge to drive her to the same depths it drove Erik.

“I think there’s more I can do, too.”

She looks out through the night air, to the satellite dish still marring the horizon. Does the metal structure call to her? She’s already displayed a remarkable sense of perception when it comes to magnetic and electric forces—as well as a constant awareness of anything metal.

“You can do anything. Believe me.”

“Can I make Sam like me?”

“Lorna, I’m going to say this once: in favor of maintaining my sanity, I absolutely refuse to entertain conversation in which you confide any attraction to members of the opposite sex.”

Lorna huffs out a breath, which sends a stray lock of hair bouncing back up behind her ear. Her lips curl in amusement, though, so he’s confident all’s forgiven.

“Fine. Be that way. I’ll just have to do things the old fashioned way.”

He is absolutely not going to ask what the old fashioned way entailed. Ever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is the end of what I've been referring to in my head as "part one." Part two will (hopefully) contain something resembling narrative continuity and an actual plot.
> 
> I've been relying on the Marvel Wiki for many of Lorna's powers - though in my mind I'm retconning out the whole interaction with her and Zaladane, and taking _extreme_ liberties with the timeline, especially with regards to the Registration Act. Thanks for putting up with it!


	7. Chapter 7

When Lorna gets upset, she tends to destroy things. Completely by accident, of course. It’s not really something she _wants_ to do. It’s just that when someone—or multiple someones—say or do something that pisses her off, metal tends to react to her emotions. So, yes, she’s destroyed a few chandeliers (three) in the two and a half years since her powers manifested. And maybe the cutlery’s been in better shape (though she can totally reshape it back to the way it was originally without any loss of integrity, which is utterly groovy). There’s just…so. Much. Metal in the mansion. And controlling her temper is something she’s working on. Really. She doesn’t remember being a really angry kid—and Dad just laughs at her when she asks if she was—so the temper’s got to come from somewhere.

Sean just shakes his head and says ‘puberty’ but that’s his default explanation for everything, so she tries not to put too much stock in it. Besides, she’s almost sixteen. There’s no way she’s still pubescent. And if Sean laughs one more time when she says it, she’s going to resize all his buttons so they don’t fit into their button holes any more.

There’s constant movement through the mansion these days. And, for the most part, she gets along with everyone. She’ll always return to Hank for comfort and familiarity, but the steady stream of students isn’t as intimidating as it had been when she was five. When it gets overwhelming, she retreats to the study—the only place in the mansion which is always and unquestioningly hers and Dad’s.

With the Registration Act so close to passing, Dad’s been in and out of Washington for the past few weeks trying to ease nerves, calm anxieties and kiss ass—Alex’s words, not hers—and the longer he’s gone, the more antsy she gets. Yeah, Dad’s not openly mutant, but that doesn’t mean people aren’t going to try and hurt him for supporting the mutant cause. The whole ‘us versus them’ thing seems stupid to her, but she’s always been different so she’s probably biased. Her father believes in equality, has raised her to believe in equality, and anything else seems ridiculous.

“Lorna, I think your Dad’s home.”

Lorna looks up from the thick book on genetics, which she’s taken to reading whenever Dad’s out of town—she doesn’t always understand it (though because of Dad the amount she gets actually borders on embarrassing) but there’s a comfortable familiarity in the words. A smile spreads across her face and she puts it down on the couch to follow Piotr to the front foyer. Hank’s down slaving away in his lab, so it’s just her, Piotr and Jono heading outside to help Dad collect his things and pay the cabbie.

 _He looks tired_ , Jono says as Dad pays the cabbie. Piotr’s already rounded the car to get his suitcase out of the trunk. _Do you think it’s bad news_?

“I hope not,” Lorna mutters.

There’s been too much bad news lately. Alex and Sean have struck out on their own, expanding the school to another campus in Massachusetts. It wasn’t that they were getting too big for the mansion—now that everyone’s gone and it’s down to the five of them, the place feels unnervingly enormous—but Dad’s activities in Washington were beginning to draw attention. After a lengthy discussion no one under the age of eighteen was privy to, “everyone” decided it would be better for the students to keep them away from the potential of prying eyes. There’d been a sad sort of resignation in her father’s gaze when he’d announced the decision, as if he’d always expected Alex and Sean to leave. The fact that they’re only a phone call and a three hour drive away didn’t even seem to register.

She hates how lonely Dad seems sometimes. It’s been there, a constant companion for years. She pretends not to notice because all the others around them pretend not to notice. Other than her and Hank, it’s the only thing in his life which seems to have any permanence.

She waits until the cabbie takes off before moving forward and kissing the top of Dad’s head. “Welcome home.”

“Thanks, dearest.” Jono’s right. He does look tired. Deep-set bags bruise the area underneath his eyes, and his smile is pulled and wan. “How are things here?”

“Hank hasn’t let us burn anything down yet, so I guess we’re okay.”

“Ah, so you successfully kept Jono out of the kitchen, then?”

 _It was one time!_ Jono protests. Lorna grins at him and he silently scowls in irritation before heading back towards the front door. Still, before he goes, Dad looks a little touched, so he must’ve said something nice. Despite his propensity for spending far too much time in the basement, Jono’s good people. She’s glad he stayed with them rather than take off to Massachusetts with the others.

Before they head inside, Lorna pauses in her step. Her awareness of metal in her surroundings has increased monumentally in the last few months, and something’s nudging against her consciousness. Something…off. Something that shouldn’t be here. Something shaped like…

And then _nothing_. No metal. Not even the old friends she knows are in the mansion.

Jono collapses—the bandages covering his face sinking in on themselves, the energy keeping them filled out disappearing and leaving a hollowed-out chest cavity behind. And Piotr’s eyes widen in horror when he tries to call forth his protective metallic form and nothing happens.

“Grab Jono,” Dad orders. Piotr scoops Jono into his arms and runs into the mansion. “Lorna, get inside.” She steps towards the front door, but freezes when he doesn’t follow.

“Dad?”

“Lorna, go. Something’s blocking our powers. And they waited until I arrived. Whoever they are, they’re prepared. If you run, they may not chase you.”

She looks into the distance, but this time at night can’t see anything beyond the star-filled horizon. “I’m not leaving you.”

“Lorna,” Dad grabs her hands. “Go. Find Hank and take the tunnels out of the mansion. They’ll get you into town, and from there I want you to keep going until you get to Sean and Alex.” To safety. “Here.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pen. He hastily scribbles down a sequence on her hand. “Call this number. Ask for Raven and tell her what’s happened. She’ll know what to do.”

Lorna shakes her head. “No.” She’ll carry him if she has to. She’s strong. She might be able to do it without her powers.

She’ll _make_ herself do it.

She begins to protest again, but Dad silences her with a look.

“Everything will be all right. I promise. Everything is all right.”

There’s a sound of a gunshot in the distance and one of the front porch lights is knocked out. Dad pushes her back towards the safety of the mansion. Lorna trips on the steps up and looks back at her father once before another lamp explodes—shards of glass falling wildly around her. The front drive plunges into darkness. Lorna wants to scream at her father to follow, but years of listening to him forces her body to run. She races into the mansion and down the stairs leading to the bomb shelter the basement. Hank—alien without his blue fur—is waiting at one of the panic exits, and ushers her inside before sealing it behind them.

The further they run, the stronger she feels her connection to her powers returning. She’s half-tempted to turn right back around and head back to the mansion, but Hank urges her onwards. Jono regains consciousness—his powers reasserting themselves to keep him alive, when there was a very good chance of whatever their assailants had done could’ve killed him—but Piotr is hesitant to put him down, even when Jono insists he’s able to walk on his own. Lorna keeps looking back over her shoulder, as if she’ll eventually turn around and see Dad following close behind them. He’s not. She doesn’t know how they neutralized everyone’s powers, but if she goes back she’s just going to be a useless teenager, panicking and putting her life in danger—and making herself a liability to her father.

But so help her god, if they hurt him, she will make them all suffer with such a terrible vengeance that they’ll beg for death before the end. It’s an adult rage, and utterly alien to her.

They make it all the way to town without pursuit. The tunnels exits into an overly large storm drain, which in turn leads them to a back alley behind the local grocer. Jono’s awake enough to begin an explanation on the hotwiring of an engine, but Lorna just shoots him a look and piles them all into a Ford Pinto and propels it easily with her powers. It’s a tight fit, but they figure out the most comfortable way to arrange themselves within twenty minutes of escaping Westchester. As they drive out of town, she sees flickering orange in the direction of the mansion and squeezes her eyes shut. They’re burning it. How can they just burn it?

It’s almost dawn when they pull into the drive of the Massachusetts Academy, and Lorna is completely drained. Even though they insisted on stopping once or twice, she kept pushing onwards, needing something to focus on other than the fact that she abandoned her father to unknown assailants and he could be gone forever.

Alex it out the front door before she brings the car to a halt, and she half-passes out in the front seat. Hank helps her out and she leans heavily on him as they trudge the long walk up to the front door. Hank explains everything to Alex over her head as she looks at the number scrawled across her hand. Raven. She needs to call Raven. Whoever that is.

Hank and Alex bundle her, Jono and Piotr off to bed seconds after they walk through the door. She wakes once, at about nine in the morning, to use the bathroom . While she’s up, she stops at a phone in the middle of the hallway and calls—hopefully Alex and Sean won’t mind incurring some long distance charges, because she’s pretty sure it’s not a local number.

The message she passes onward is garbled—something she’ll be hopelessly embarrassed about tomorrow morning—and she stumbles back to bed. She’s sore all over, like she was actually pushing the stupid car half the night, and passing out again is a welcome relief.


	8. Chapter 8

The first time Magneto lays his eyes on the Massachusetts Academy, he feels a swell of bittersweet homecoming. It makes no sense of course—he’s never been here, and any kinship he might feel to the people running the place has been subverted by nearly twelve years of distance. But they called, and he’s come. Mystique stands tall and proud beside him, ready to face down any scrutiny in her own skin. Funny how, the closer they come to the front door, he starts feeling more like ‘Erik’ and thinks of her as ‘Raven.’ Time has a strange way of passing.

“Should we knock?” Raven asks as they reach the front door.

“Go ahead.”

She does, and Erik steps back and waits, patiently, for someone to answer. He doesn’t know what to expect. Charles has never called the number Raven took such great pains to get to him. It might have something to do with the Registration Act and its imminent implementation. He’s given up hope that Charles will come around to his way of thinking. And perhaps it’s better to have them in direct opposition than on the same side. As a tempering voice in the back of his mind, Charles is far more effective than he might be as a real-world distraction at Erik’s side. Perhaps, when the war is over…

Alex Summers—Havok—answers the door and stares at them in unrepentant shock for a moment, giving Erik the opportunity to look him over. He somehow sturdier. As if years of dealing with children has brought some welcome tempering to his mettle. The scared, angry child Erik remembers is gone.

“Well, the vultures already come to circle.”

Mostly gone.

Erik raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t respond to the antagonistic tone. “Charming to see you too, Havok.”

“Alex,” the other man immediately corrects. “What are you doing here?”

“I received a call on my personal line,” Raven offers. “Asking us to come. So unless Charles was just trying to waste our time, can you please tell him we’re here?”

His expression immediately shutters. Erik’s stomach clenches unpleasantly. Whoever called them—and Raven didn’t recognize the voice—it wasn’t Charles, and it doesn’t bode well if Alex is on the defensive already. He struggles with himself for a moment before finally stepping back and gesturing them inside. The front lobby looks nothing like the mansion in Westchester. The layout is less austere. It looks more like a school and less like a formerly loveless home masquerading as a school. Little wonder they moved here when Charles started rattling cages in D.C.

A few students skirt out of their way as Alex leads them into a sitting room just off the lobby, and even Raven’s blue skin garners little more than a few interested sideways glances. It seems Charles learned from some of his mistakes after all.

Alex snags one boy by the sweater and asks him to collect Sean and Hank and then sends him on his way. _Plus ca change_. The silence which settles between them is extremely uncomfortable, and with each passing moment Erik finds his nerves settling more on edge. Something has happened to Charles. And, not for the first time since leaving him abandoned on the beach in Cuba, Erik feels an intense wave of concern for his former friend. His former lover.

Hank joins them before Sean does, and obviously isn’t too surprised to see them. After closing the door behind him, he studiously avoids looking at Raven and instead focuses on Erik.

“Here’s the situation,” he says, voice completely of emotion, “last night, just as Charles returned home from Washington, we were attacked. Whoever was responsible had some way of nullifying our mutations, and Charles stayed behind to give myself and the remaining students time to escape. This morning we confirmed that the mansion was destroyed.”

Erik feels a tug of sorrow. Some of his precious few good memories are back dropped by the mansion’s beautiful grounds. Charles’ dreams developed there.

“Charles is gone. We don’t know who has him. Or who instigated the attack.”

Ah. Fear. Erik has almost forgotten the sensation.

“Gone?” Raven repeats. “ _And you just let them take him_?”

“One of the students almost died during the attack. Charles…Charles wanted to make sure we escaped.”

And, suddenly, there’s another thought at the forefront of Erik’s mind. As easy as it is to forget, Charles has a more personal stake in the school these days.

“What about his daughter?” The words escape Erik before he has a chance to pull them back. He’s been cautiously aloof from looking too deeply into Charles’ life. It’s purely a matter of self-defense.

Hank looks at him sharply. “Lorna? Is either still in bed or listening at the door.”

There’s a long moment’s pause and then the door to the sitting room slowly opens. A young woman steps inside and Erik gets a first look at Charles’ child. Raven collected the few scarce details available—she’s lived much of her life under the radar. He knows her name is Lorna. Her birth records have been lost in time, and Charles adopted her almost ten years ago.

And she has green hair. Erik spares a moment to wonder if it’s her only mutation—because it certainly is a mutation. No stylist on the planet could manage such a vivid color. She looks to be in her mid-teens, but lacks the rough edges and scars borne by many of the mutants he’s seen over the years. At least, on first inspection. If he looks closely at her arms, he can see the finest remnants of old scars and he wonders what her life was before Charles Xavier entered it.

She looks wary, but not afraid. How much has Charles told her about them?

“Lorna Xavier, Erik Lensherr and Raven.”

She nods in greeting, but shies away from actually addressing them. Wariness. That’s good. It speaks of proper survival instincts.

“They’re old friends of your father’s.”

“Oh.” She looks back and forth between them, torn between hope and doubt. “And one of you got my phone call?” She clenches her right hand, but Erik still manages to glean the barest glimpse of a trail of ink running across her palm.

“Yes,” Raven answers. She studies her erstwhile niece with a careful eye. “It was good of you to call. Charles is very important to us.”

It seems to be exactly the wrong thing to say. Lorna’s lips purse and her posture immediately goes on the defense. He’s not sure what about Raven’s words have spurred on the sudden mistrust, but he feels the need to attempt de-escalation. They’re all mutants here, and allies. For the moment.

“We’ll make inquiries. Raven has numerous contacts, and when someone as prestigious as your father disappears the news gets around.” She doesn’t relax. “It may take several days.” Or weeks. Or months. Not something she probably wants to hear. He glances at Alex, who looks like he’s just swallowed a lemon, but nods at the unasked question. “But we’ll stay here in the meantime to keep you appraised.” And to protect them. Erik can’t vouch for the measures the instructors may take to protect the students here, but they’re likely not as extreme as his own.

“And when you find him?” Lorna demands.

“Then we’ll get him out. And we’ll make whoever took him pay.”

The bloodthirstiness in his tone, at least, seems to settle her somewhat. She nods sharply—not at all a gesture she would’ve picked up from Charles—and leaves to room to let them plan. Erik doubts it’s the end of it. Hank looks helplessly after her, obvious concern settled on his shoulders. For a moment, he looks as if he’s going to say something, but silences himself with a shake of his head.

“We…appreciate the help.” The admission must be like pulling teeth for the other man, and he still isn’t looking at Raven. “I’m afraid none of us would know the first place to start when it came to looking for who took him.”

“We’re not enemies, McCoy. Just idealistically different.”

Erik can’t help but spare a thought wondering if he might’ve been able to say the same thing in another world, where he and Charles hadn’t shared such a tumultuous past before their inevitable parting. As such, they spent far too much time together—in and out of bed—before he’d taken his revenge on Shaw. Fighting Charles would be like fighting a part of himself, and doubtless Charles felt the same way. Otherwise, why not continue training up his students to be warriors?

“He mourned you,” Alex mutters. “Both of you. For years.”

If Erik were so inclined, he could offer his own protestations about the nature of a broken heart. But they’re not here for such things. And of all the men Erik might confide in, he would _not_ start with Alex Summers.

“It was his decision not to come with us,” Raven coolly reminds him.

Erik isn’t interested in dredging up the past. So he shoots Raven a sidelong look. “Why don’t we start with your people in D.C. and see what we can find.”

“How long will it take? Really?” Hank asks.

“Well that depends on who has him. But mark my words, whoever it is, we’re not going to leave him with them.”

The words come out in a growl. And, if anything, it seems to actually set McCoy at ease. “Good.”


	9. Chapter 9

Erik and Raven avoid the school population during dinner, preferring to eat in the rooms they’d been provided. There’s a certain lack of animosity present in everyone in the Academy—with the obvious exceptions—and yet he’s not prepared to become emotionally invested in this new generation of mutants. Not when they’ll be denied him once Charles is rescued. Raven is company enough. They’ve settled into a comfortable relationship over the years. Friendship has never strayed into anything more. There was always the nagging, constant fear on both sides he might use her as a substitute for her brother, so they’d both looked for other means to avoiding solitude over the years. Neither of them have been completely successful.

This far outside of town, extreme quiet shrouds the Academy after about eleven. He doesn’t mind the silence. The Brotherhood is often on the run, spending time between cities and counties of varying populations. The problem which arises is how easy it is to speculate on the worst. Whether Charles is dead. What his captors are doing to him if he’s not. There are numerous reasons Charles might’ve been taken. His involvement with the government. Someone’s discovery of the true, terrifying extent of his powers and spurned by a desire to use him. Perhaps…perhaps even an enemy of Erik’s who’s looked too deeply into the past and is trying some desperate last measure to avenge themselves upon him. He’s not sure which possibility he hates the most.

He leaves his room at two in the morning, when the solitude finally threatens to overwhelm him. The hallways are empty, and he takes his time learning the layout of the building. On the first floor, he passes a makeshift laboratory someone’s set up for Hank. The man himself is passed out atop a stack of papers.

His inability to sleep when worried seems to be a trait he shares with Miss Lorna Xavier, as he stumbles upon her in a small rec room. She’s sitting in front of a chessboard, her hands folded in front of her, staring at the pieces. If they do indeed contain the answers to Charles’ disappearance, they seem to be reluctant to share.

She glances up at him for a moment and sighs, leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms over her chest.

“You’re up rather late,” Erik points out.

“I can’t tell if it’s because I slept too late this morning, or…” She trails off and looks back to the pieces.

“You play?”

She looks up at him with a raised eyebrow—this trait she’s absolutely picked up from Charles. “My father is Charles Xavier.”

Of course. Charles’ most poignant emotional connections were always made across a chessboard. “May I?”

“Sure.”

He takes the seat across from her. “Did he teach you how to play on his father’s set?” The one they’d played on a thousand times, late into the night, barely paying attention to the game and instead sharing quiet conversation.

“No. One of the pieces was missing.”

“Oh?”

“The black king. He told me he lost it, but he carries it around with him.”

Oh, Charles.

Lorna opens with her queen-side knight. It’s Charles’ favorite as well. She isn’t nearly as proficient as Charles is, but she has some good thoughts when it comes to strategy. Ultimately, Erik wins, but it takes him somewhat longer than he might’ve thought.

“Did you ever play my dad? You seem to be more his speed.”

“Many times.”

Lorna sniffs. “Right.” She bites her tongue, but whatever’s been bothering her since he and Raven were introduced this afternoon lingers close to the surface. “So, Magneto, huh? Is that a nickname?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“When we were younger, we started this really stupid game where the other kids and I used to give each other pet names like that to try and make Dad laugh. We came up with the most ridiculous things.” She smiles a bit, though its strained. “They barely made sense half the time, and the others were so hokey, but he laughed at them all anyway. I thought he was the biggest dweeb ever.” Her lips tighten into a thin line. “Can I ask you something?”

“You may.”

“Mystique said Dad was important to you.” Erik nods. Her eyes shoot up to meet his. “Then where the hell have you been? He’s so lonely all the time. Even when he’s with me.” There’s a hefty bit of resentment there.

He tries to prevent his anger from rising in response to hers. He’s the adult here. “I can’t begin to explain the circumstances between your father and I.” There isn’t enough time in the world to allow him the chance to properly articulate his feelings for Charles. “But I will say that I’m the reason he’s confined to a wheelchair.”

“And what? You didn’t want to have to see it every day?”

“ _Don’t_ ,” he snaps. “…presume to understand when you’ve known me less than a day.”

“Well I’ve known Dad most of my life, so I think I’ve got some perspective.” They glare at each other across the collected game pieces, twin expressions of antagonism from which neither of them seem prepared to back away. “He wouldn’t have hated you. I don’t think Dad’s capable of really hating anyone.”

“It wasn’t his hate I was afraid of,” Erik admits, hoping to bring an end to the argument. Even when Charles was lying paralyzed in his arms, he hadn’t looked at Erik with the raw anger Lorna’s brought to the fore.

“Then what was it?”

“Frankly, none of your business.”

The anger slips for a moment and she’s suddenly showing her youth with adolescent frustration. Fifteen? Sixteen? At her age, he was already plotting his revenge on Shaw in painful detail. He wonders if this experience will leave her similarly tarnished and grown beyond her years.

“Fine. But why come back now?”

“To help him. Or avenge him, if I can’t.”

Lorna frowns. “Dad said he once lost absolutely everything to someone’s vengeance.” The words sound rehearsed, as if she was anticipating them coming to this point in the conversation. “Does revenge help?” Lorna asks quietly. It’s not a malicious question. Or one of the pointed ones he might expect from Charles. It’s honest, and worried and a little cracked. It makes her seem vulnerable.

Erik pauses before answering. Does it? Charles had been correct, after all. Killing Shaw hadn’t brought him peace. He hadn’t expected it would. But, perhaps, he’d hoped. Still hoped, that if his contributions to the mutant population saved even one man from feeling the overwhelming loss which still haunted him when he thought of his mother’s death he might find some measure of the serenity Charles always promised him.

“No.”

Lorna purses her lips. “Good to know.”


	10. Chapter 10

Raven is in and out of the Academy over the course of the next two weeks, contacting or impersonating everyone she can imagine to get more information on Charles. So far, their efforts have been for naught. Erik remains at the Academy, ostensibly to provide additional protection, though with the number of mutants with extraordinarily useful powers he probably won’t contribute anymore than the majority of the population should they come under attack. He imagines Charles would lay down his life—or already has—to keep them safe. He can do no less.

Still, and surprisingly, his presence does seem to quell some nerves in the faculty. Sean in particular, has taken to seeking him out to reminisce about their first and last mission together and the weeks leading up to it. Even Hank defrosts, though it may be because Erik has spent considerable time with Lorna, distracting her with chess rather than letting her agonize over her father’s whereabouts.

It still comes as a surprise when he’s invited to join the faculty for a drink one evening after the students have gone to bed.

He’s learned names during his time here, and taken great pains to appraise himself of the powers and potential usefulness of the adults in the building. It’s a terrible habit. Truly. But one he can’t break. The Registration Act is going to vote the next day, and he needs to know every potential resource available in case their silent battles break into all-out war. Spending this much time around children—and he doesn’t know how Charles manages—makes him question his motives but not his purpose.

The faculty gathers in one of the many rooms on the lower floor, individuals occasionally darting out to go check on the students. It’s a mixed group, but not an unpleasant one, and most of them seem happy enough to welcome him and Raven to the fold. A glass of scotch is placed in his hand moments after he walks through the door, and he takes a seat near the back corner of the room to keep an eye on the goings-on.

“Nice hat,” one of the men—a familiar-looking, if surly fellow—mutters into his beer after a quick glimpse at Erik’s helmet. Frankly, most of the time he forgets he’s wearing it.

“Nice sideburns.” He could take it off. Charles isn’t here. Neither is Emma, who he still sometimes has a problem trusting. But there are a great many unknown variables in this place, and he’s not comfortable with the idea of someone intruding on his thoughts.

Sean wastes no time breaking away from a small knot of people and joining Erik and Raven.

“It’s good having you here,” he says with a grin. His cheeks are slightly flushed—he’s obviously had a few already. “I was just thinking the other day when I was teaching my fliers that it’s a shame you weren’t there to push anyone off a satellite dish. It’s pretty effective.”

He laughs, and even Erik can’t help an amused smirk from spreading across his face. It was terribly funny, at the time. Especially Sean’s face.

“Sean, are you drunk?” Raven asks.

“No.” Sean scoffs and takes another deep swallow of beer. “…Maybe.” He grins over at Raven. “We’ve missed you, too.”

Raven sighs noncommittally into her wine glass. “Hmm.”

Raven hasn’t said as much, but Erik’s been able to tell she’s trying to not resent Charles—and Lorna, and every other student here with a mutation they can’t hide—for growing up and getting over his childish desire to protect his students who can’t easily mask their mutation through hiding. It might be part of the reason she spends such a large amount of her time outside the Academy, rather than within it getting acquainted with her niece. Erik’s not even confident she’s told Lorna about their familial connection.

The night continues on with an air of quiet camaraderie. Discussion turns to the Act, and what will happen if it passes. Such thoughts have been at the forefront of Erik’s mind for the past decade, but he doesn’t offer up his own ideas on what the mutant population will have to do in such an eventuality. The gathered group isn’t so concerned with fighting against the humans who would be their oppressors, but what to do about the students in the school, and the mutants who have yet to discover the haven Charles has created for their kind. Surprisingly, they’re not insisting on hiding here, but ensuring that people who want to will be able to.

And those mutants who are seized by the government, what of them? Or those who refuse to register and end up as fugitives—as he imagines make up most of the men and women in the room? If the Brotherhood is unable to intimidate the government into compliance, perhaps their talents might be aimed another way.

The thought strays dangerously close to the vision he and Charles once shared and he shoots it down before it can go any further.

Raven leans over to whisper in his ear. “It’s going to take more than wishful thinking to get mutants in danger here.”

Erik nods in agreement. “Significantly more.” He regards her sidelong. “You know, Kurt might be happier here than he is in Germany.” They sent Raven’s son to live with a group of Roma who’s family Erik knew in the camps, hoping to avoid dragging him into danger—he’s still only a child, just over six. They’re good people, and willing to overlook the dark blue skin and pointed tail Kurt acquired from his parents. But from what he can tell, this may be the better environment for him.

Raven doesn’t immediately agree, but she doesn’t disagree either, and that’s something. He leaves her to ruminate into her wine glass and fetches himself another glass if scotch.

The following evening, the live news broadcast from Capitol Hill is on every television in the building. Tension chokes the hallways, every member of the school—faculty or student—trapped in front of a TV. He’d thought to spend the evening in his room, preparing to contact Emma with instructions if the Act passes. Instead, he’s drawn to one of the many rooms crowded with other mutants, waiting to see if their world is going to change.

Lorna is hovering at the back of the room, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed over her chest. He joins her, earning a quick sideways glance. There’s real fear in her eyes. He’s seen it before, when conversation strays to her father. He hates it. Hates that she has to feel afraid, when she’s a member of a superior species. Despite the fear, her face is carefully neutral. Whenever one of the other students looks to her—the daughter of their school’s founder—she presents a calming stoicism which settles nerves. There’s a strange dichotomy in Lorna, and he’s not sure what to make of it. He’s seen her angry. He’s seen her serene. One day, she might have to choose between them.

“…and with this last vote, P.L. 94-666 is passed into effect. As President Ford has been one of its strongest proponets, it seems the Mutant Registration Act has been legalized by Congress.”

He stiffens slightly when thin fingers tangle into his. Lorna remains stoic, but she’s gripping his hand tight enough that her knuckles are turning white. He holds back, anchoring her in place. It’s easy to forget the majority of the mutants in the Academy are children. Lorna, as well.

“What’s going to happen now?” she whispers.

Now? They’ll likely be forced to report to government-controlled stations, where emotionless bureaucrats will ask them a thousand inappropriate questions and find at-a-glance ways to separate them from the rest of the population. Mutants deemed too powerful to allow in public will be segregated until appropriate containment measures are found. Men like Herr Schmidt will find ways to infiltrate such places and mutants will be subjected to torture in the name of science.

He doesn’t say any of this. Because he’s not going to let it happen. Not to Lorna. Not to Charles. And not to any other mutant in the world.

“War.”

He expects Lorna to pull her hand free and recoil. Instead, her grip impossibly tightens. “We need to find my father.”

“We will.” It’s a promise. “Everything will be right.”

Lorna’s eyes squeeze shut, a first crack in her fragile mask of neutrality. But she doesn’t cry. Doesn’t yell at him. He’s not sure she believes him, but she doesn’t withdraw. Instead, they remain lingering at the back of the room while the world outside turns against them.


	11. The Noodle Incident

The next few weeks sees an influx of mutants through the Academy doors. Previous graduates. Mutants looking to avoid the new ‘registration camps’ which have begun littering the countryside. The building is spacious enough to accommodate them, for now, but the housing solution is short-term at best. Charles will have to reorganize things if he wants to keep everyone together for any substantial length of time.

To those who belong here, it’s like welcoming old friends home. But it sets Erik’s teeth on edge. So many strangers pose a greater security risk than he can begin to describe. Charles went to great pains to hide his abilities from the public at large, and there’s a very real chance someone in the Academy betrayed him. He doesn’t voice the possibility, save to Hank who’s icy scorn thaws the longer Erik stays there. He’s become more involved with the students and faculty, memories of his time at Charles’ mansion complementing the new ones he’s acquiring now.

He’s stopped spending the majority of his time in his room, and yet still wanders the halls at night. More often than not, he ends up joining Lorna for a game of chess as they both try to avoid the nighttime demons haunting their solitude. This evening, she’s not waiting for him in the rec room, and—surprisingly at odds—he instead wanders past some classrooms which are supposed to be empty.

One of them isn’t, and he pauses just beyond the circle of light cast by the open door.

“…Alex keeps his car keys on a hook in his bedroom. We might be able to get Kitty to grab them for us, but it’s gonna have to be while he’s in class…”

 _Well, we’d best get them. It’s a long walk to New York._

“Yeah, and I’m not pushing the car again.”

Erik walks up to the open door and immediately the conversation inside quiets, a road map hurriedly crumpled up and pushed away. The perpetrators—Lorna, Piotr and the young man who tends to spend most of his time in the basement away from the other students—look up, trying their utmost to appear innocent.

As he wasn’t born yesterday, he’s understandably skeptical.

“If you’re attempting to be subtle, try changing the topic of conversation instead of shutting up completely. It looks less like you’re planning something.” He waits patiently for them to either own up or come up with a convincing lie.

Lorna breaks first. “We have this friend.” She pauses, but Erik waits without interruption. “He used to go to the school. His parents are really horrible people. They sent him there because they thought the school ‘cured’ mutants, and they wanted him to be normal. Like you can just change something you’re born with.” Her hand runs up her arm, brushing over the mostly-faded scars.

Piotr snorts derisively. The other boy—Jonothon? Erik barely knows him past the thick black bindings with which he covers his face—plants an elbow in his stomach. It’s absurd, considering he’s almost a foot shorter. Piotr does quiet, however, and allows Lorna to continue.

“When they realized that wasn’t what the school did, they yanked him out. We’ve been in touch with him constantly since then, but we haven’t heard from him since the Act went through. For all we know, they’ve forced him to one of those new registration camps and we want to go get him.”

“And you’re going to steal Alex’s car because…?”

“Hank said no.” Lorna’s shoulders stiffen. “He would do the same for any of us.”

“Ah.” Erik considers the trio. From what he can tell—and it can be difficult with mutants—they’re all under eighteen. And he can’t imagine any member of the faculty would be thrilled with him were he to endorse this escapade.

He grabs his car keys out of his pocket and tosses them to Piotr. “Not a scratch.”

Two brilliant smiles break out. And from the easing of tension in Jonothon’s shoulders, he seems equally pleased.

 _8-track or cassette?_ Jonothon asks.

“Cassette,” Erik confirms.

 _Brilliant. I’m going to go fetch my Stooges tapes. I’ll see you two in front in five._ He leaves the room, Piotr close on his heels, promising to meet Lorna outside as soon as he retrieves his things.

Lorna hangs back, and once the boys are gone, walks up to Erik. Before he can ask, she wraps her arms around his neck in a brief embrace. Erik stiffens before, finally, hugging her back.

“Thank you.”

It’ll be worth weathering Hank’s outrage. Before she can leave, Erik gives her the number of one of his New York City contacts. Mastermind is an absolute bastard, but if they run afoul of anything, he wants to make sure they’re safe. He sees them off, watching until his Cadillac turns off the drive. God, he hopes they don’t destroy it.

Hank is livid.

Three days later, they return to the Academy with only minor body damage done to his car—which Jonothon emphatically claims isn’t his fault—and introduce Erik to Jean-Paul Beaubier. Jean-Paul and Piotr become inseparable, and his chess games with Lorna become more deliberate, and less meetings of chance during sleepless nights.  
 


	12. Chapter 12

News of Charles finally breaks five weeks after his capture. Raven is deep undercover in Washington, and stumbles across word of a military instillation aimed at weaponizing mutant abilities. From what she can glean, they didn’t take him because they were aware of his powers, but because he was rocking the boat on the Registration Act, and had come quite close to changing the minds of several key players. When he almost escaped through use of his powers, they found a means of keeping him trapped there. She has a location, and it’s all Erik needs.

Alex, Alex’s brother Scott, Logan—who Erik affectionately refers to as ‘side burns’ since their first interaction—Hank and himself are preparing to leave when Lorna joins them. One look between her and Hank, and Erik realizes there’s about to be a fight.

“I’m coming.”

“Out of the question,” Hank tells her.

“It’s not ‘out of the question.’ He’s my father. I’m coming.” She frowns. “Or I’m going to follow you. And you know I can.”

Interesting. Apparently, Erik’s taken her too much at face value, assuming her hair was the only thing that set her apart from the ranks of humanity. He didn’t ask—didn’t wish to know, perhaps? After all, if he’d known, he might’ve been tempted to try and recruit her to the Brotherhood, and he can’t do that to Charles. Not again.

“Do you know what he’ll do to me if you come?” She’s unmoved. Hank sighs. “Lorna…”

“Polaris,” she corrects. Eyebrows shoot up across the room. “I talked to Raven. Apparently it’s a thing.”

“You’re not going to stop her coming, Beast,” Erik tells him. “And we’re just wasting time arguing about it.”

“Fine, _Magneto_ ,” Hank growls. “You can explain it to Charles, then.”

“Gladly.”

Lorna shoots him a grateful look. He hopes that gratitude extends to her intercepting Charles when he goes completely ballistic on Erik for dragging his daughter into danger. Because it will be dangerous. Despite this, he finds he’s reluctant to leave Lorna at the Academy. She’s become…important to him. He wants to be able to keep an eye on her and ensure she’s safe, and bringing her along is the only way to do so. Charles was just as good at digging under his defensives and winding his way into Erik’s life.

What is it about the Xavier family that gets to him in this way?

“She’ll stay with me,” Erik finally says. “Havok and Cyclops together. Beast, you and Side Burns—”

“I work better alone,” Logan states.

“Then you two will stay in constant communication.” Hank has developed a fairly reliable long-range radio. It’s proving invaluable without a telepath with them to coordinate. “He’s being held in the second sub-basement. Polaris and I will retrieve him, and we’ll need defenses between there and the exit, as well as a clear path out.

“Raven’s intel tells us its best to go in between one and five a.m., when they have the least amount of staff.” He pulls out a map she’s acquired of the area. The facility is in the middle of nowhere in the Rockies. Hank’s already retrieved the Blackbird in preparation for an aerial arrival. “We land here, and take the road up to the facility. There are sentries lining the way—”

“I’ll take care of them,” Logan says. “I know about mountains.”

“All right. As soon as we have Charles out the door, we all head back to the Blackbird. We don’t know what state he’ll be in—” Lorna clenches her fists “—so Hank, we’ll need you to be as close as possible in case he needs medical attention.”

“I can fly the jet if I have to,” Alex offers.

“Excellent.”

“And what happens if we run into whatever cancelled out our powers back at the mansion?”

Erik smirked. “We rely on other talents.” He steps back from the map. “Let’s go.”

On the jet, he takes the seat next to Lorna. She’s tied her abundant hair back behind her head in a tight French braid, and has chosen close-fitting dark clothes. Probably for the best. Bright yellow jumpsuits aren’t exactly subtle.

En route to the facility, Erik reaches up and removes the helmet from his head. _Charles?_ He’s not expecting a response, but it’s like his awareness opens in a way it hasn’t since Cuba. There’s nothing. The comfortable niche in his mind Charles once inhabited is empty. But it’s not like a dust-covered room which has gone derelict for want of occupants. Rather, a space longing for a familiar presence.

“Pretty ballsy,” Alex mutters from his place.

“Do you think once we have him back, I’m going to walk away?” Erik asks.

“Isn’t that what you’re good at?”

“Touché.”

Hank turns around in the pilot’s seat. “Ten minutes. Everyone get ready.”

Erik glances at Lorna. She’s pale, but unafraid. “He’ll be fine.”

“I know.” She turns to Erik. “I trust you.”

Alex studies them for a second before coughing uncomfortably. “Umm, there’s probably something we should tell you…”

Hank shouts back. “It’s going to have to wait, Alex. We’ve got incoming visitors.”

“If he crashes this thing again, I swear to god…” Alex twists in his seat to look out the front window and spots a helicopter approaching. Lorna straightens. “Did they know we were coming?”

“No. It has to be some sort of randomized patrol.” Erik unbuckles his belt and punches the release for the back hatch. _Déjà vu_. “I’ll take care of them. Land the jet—gently this time, Hank, if you please—and we’ll have to go the rest of the way by foot.”

Taking out the helicopter is child’s play, but he has little doubt that they’ll miss some pre-arranged check in and give them away. Hank lands the Blackbird and they pour from it. Logan immediately takes off into the wilderness. And Lorna…

Lorna’s eyes are darting between him and the crushed remnants of the helicopter.

“Let’s go.”

They move quickly. Once they’re away from the landing site, they find a paved road leading up to the facility. A head-on approach isn’t ideal, but there are few ways in besides the front door. Along the way, Logan’s tinny voice reports in every time he takes out one of the foot patrols.

Unfortunately, either he’s too slow in getting one or the chopper reported them before Erik was able to take it out. Two jeeps with mounted guns tear down from the facility, flying at them with reckless speed on the narrow mountain roadway.

Lorna breaks away from them. Erik shouts after her, but Hank grabs his shoulder. There’s a grim resignation in his face.

As they draw closer, Lorna cups her palms and raises her hands in an intimately familiar gesture. Before Erik can even register what’s happening, the cars fly up into the air. Waving her hands, she rips the engines out from beneath the cars and throws them over the side of the cliff. Erik can feel the pull of his powers drawn to her; opposite polarities attracting at each other from a short distance.

And in that second, he understands what Charles has hidden from him.

Once the cars have disappeared over the side, Lorna turns back to them. Her eyes meet Erik’s, quiet understanding in her gaze.

Hank sighs. “Let’s go.”

Right. They’re going to save Charles. And then Erik’s going to kill him.


	13. Chapter 13

Lorna tears down the chain and barbed wire gate, twisting and bending it out of their way. A line of men holding guns stand waiting for them, and Erik rips the guns from their hands, throwing them to the side. The men follow—their unfortunate reliance on buttons, belt buckles and zippers their ultimate undoing. He and Lorna break off from the rest of the group, running for the entrance. Scott and Alex flank them to make sure the way is clear, blasting aside the small wall-mounted turrets guarding the entrance. Erik has to trust they’ll keep the way clear. The second they step foot into the main compound, a screeching alarm comes alive over their heads.

He and Lorna function well together. She tears the doors off the elevator, and he uses the metal cables to lower them down to the next level. The elevator doesn’t go down as far as they need to—they’ll have to rely on stairs for part of this journey. He places a hand on her shoulder before she can treat the lower-level doors to similar destruction.

“How are you at deflecting bullets?”

“Dad always told me to stop them. Never deflect them.”

“Have you had practice?”

“Well, it’s not like he aimed a gun at me or anything.” She shifts uncomfortably, hovering in the air, aided by the metal encasing them. “But I may have had a couple of friends help me.”

“Good girl.”

She opens the doors. There’s a wall of men in front of them, alerted by the blaring alarms upstairs. Lorna throws up her hand and a pulse of magnetic energy slams into them, throwing them backwards. One manages to squeeze off a round in their direction, and Erik stops the bullets mid-flight. By the time it falls uselessly to the ground, they’re off and running. Lorna takes a spare second to twist the barrels of the guns, rendering them useless, and Erik throws the soldiers against the walls hard enough that they won’t be a problem on their way out.

He focuses all his attention on their path through the building, not daring to focus on the new revelation. Once they turn the corner away from the elevator, hallways branch off in five different directions, a maze of impossible angles and architectural complications.

“Doesn’t look like they have a directory,” Lorna mutters. “Should we split up?”

“Over my dead body.” Erik goes to the place in his mind again. He’s tucked it away at the back of his consciousness, always aware it would be available to him. He focuses on the feeling of Charles. The smell of him. The taste of him. Memories he thought faded over time, but ready to jump to the forefront of his mind.

Nothing. Damn. They must be doing something to block his telepathy. A systematic search for the stairs downward will take too long—the facility stretches out too far.

Only one things to do then.

Erik kneels. Beneath the smooth tile floor, the metal structure of the building calls to him. He maps out the metal framework. The crossbeams. Beneath this floor—built for obfuscation and deception—the layout is much simpler. He pulls upward, barely straining his abilities to rend the structure apart.

When a generous hole has opened in the flooring, he drops down. Lorna follows.

“Are there other mutants in here?”

“It’s meant to be a holding facility,” Erik says, repeating the scarce information Raven was able to retrieve. “For after the Act was passed.”

“You’re talking like it was an eventuality.”

“Trust me. It was.”

He expands his awareness, his senses flying down the corridors to further map out the rooms beyond. He can pick up the minute magnetic fields surrounding the people upstairs, and searched for those down here. There are only a few, but just as the circle of his search expands its cuts off, bouncing around a large area of blankness in his mind.

“Come.”

Lorna follows without question. Two corridors and they’ve turned towards the void. Lorna is starting to feel it too, he can tell by the sudden tension in her shoulders.

“You mentioned other talents. What are they?”

He keeps going. Too many steps forward, and he’s accosted by the numbness. At a base level he refuses to acknowledge, it terrifies him. Even in the middle of the dessert, there is still the draw and ebb of the Earth calling out to him. This is like death. He suddenly appreciates what Charles must have felt when he first donned his helmet.

In the sphere of nothingness, his body feels heavier, unallayed by the metal around them. They push onward, through it, as though it’s not slowly killing them. Have his captors kept Charles here the entire time?

“There.”

A line of doors. Guarded by two men, and this time no way to stop the bullets suddenly flying their way. Erik tackles Lorna to the ground, and with barely a second though withdraws a throwing knife from his belt. He whips it at the first man, finding purchase in the man’s neck. He drops to the ground, clawing at the blade and gurgling as blood fills his airway. He rolls Lorna beneath him and gives the other guard the same treatment, catching him in the heart.

He stands and helps Lorna to her feet. “Never rely exclusively on your powers.”

Then, with a silent wave of his hand, he sends her to check on the first of the doors as he goes to the second. Nothing. He checks the next one. Still nothing.

“Erik.”

He joins Lorna across the hallway. He peers through the window into the room, his face twisting up into a frown when he sees a small green form strapped to what appears to be a giant dish. He turns to one of the fallen guards and picks up his gun to shoot out the lock. Once it cracks apart, he kicks in the door. There’s not much else in the room. No additional guards or security. Just the small, pathetic figure.

He scans the room and finds a clipboard hanging off the back of the door. A quick glimpse confirms what he’s feared. Another mutant, rendered brain dead by a potent drug cocktail, used to suppress the powers of mutants around him. The machine to which he’s attached is barely generating at a tenth of its capacity. Should they turn it onto full, it will be more than capable of stretching out across this entire facility—capable of holding thousands of uncooperative or dangerous mutants.

“Go check the next room.”

His tone carries enough weight that Lorna goes without question. He draws the last of his knives from his belt and approaches the machine. With a silent apology, he puts the other mutant out of his misery—the most humanitarian act he can manage under present circumstances. His powers return in a rush, and he’s suddenly aware of the gathering forces above them. They’re going to be in for a fight. He crumples the rest of the machine like a piece of paper and leaves its remains behind

The last room has a single occupant. Strapped down to a gurney, with a thick IV line secured in his arm and a half-empty bag dripping liquid into his veins. _Charles._

“Daddy.” Lorna is already at his side, yanking the thick straps off him. “Daddy, wake up.” She taps his cheek, but Charles doesn’t move. There’s no sign of eye movement either. And so help them if they’ve done the same to him as they did to the poor mutant next door. “Erik, he’s not waking up.”

Erik joins Lorna’s side and lifts Charles into his arms, running his hands across Charles’ body to check for damage. Attached to the back of his neck, a metal chip digs into his skin. The barest inspection confirms it’s made of the same material as his helmet. They’ll have to leave it in for now, unless they want to risk further damage to Charles’ spine.

Remembering the guards above them, Erik mentally reaches into one of the pouches on his belt and withdraws a dozen medium-sized ball bearings. Stretching and expanding them, he creates a makeshift stretcher and lies Charles down atop it. It’ll do for now. Until they’re back to the Blackbird and are confident they’re safe.

“There are more guards overhead.”

Lorna nods. As one, they stretch their arms out to the ceiling overhead and create another exit. Her own powers complement his, her attention to detail contrasted by his raw ability. They fly upwards, Charles tucked carefully between them. This high up, the sounds of battle on the main floor are clearer.

They find their way back to the elevator and freeze in place when confronted by another row of soldiers. They’ve been preparing for Erik, it seems. Ceramic guns. Specially-made uniforms. And a smug-looking man standing behind them. He doesn’t look like a soldier. Or a scientist. He looks like a politician, and that makes it all the worse.

“Well, Magneto, we’d been prepared to receive you as a visitor, but not quite so soon.” He looks at Charles, levitating above the ground. Erik interposes himself between the enemy and Charles and Lorna. “And you’ve brought Xavier’s little bitch with you. How delightful. It does save us ever so much trouble.” He looks over Erik’s shoulder. “He’s quite powerful. So powerful, in fact, we had to neuter him twice. And all he did was call out for you. Now, why do you suppose he did that?”

The man reaches into his jacket pocket and withdraws a chess piece.

Anger, white-hot and painful, digs into Erik’s skin. “I am going to bring this entire place down around you,” Erik promises. Even as he says the words, he feels for the metal structure around them. Unlike the rest of this floor, the area around the elevator is all bound up with tightly-entwined metal beans and elaborate joints. Without being able to muster far more concentration than he has at present, any move to bring it down will result in the entire area being destroyed.

It’s no exaggeration: they have been expecting him.

“Ah, yes. I wondered if you’d killed our little leech. But I don’t think burying us all down here is really the way to go about it. Do you? Killing us all won’t stop other facilities exactly like this one from springing up around the country—I should know, I’ve overseen the construction for three of them.”

“You propose we turn ourselves over to you instead?”

“I propose doing exactly what I say. Unless you want one of your companions to be the sudden recipient of a bullet through the brain.”

Erik does not look back at them.

The man smiles, apparently taking Erik’s silence for concession. “They’re quite excellent little things, these guns. Designed especially with you in mind. After all, you’ve become somewhat of a problem child for us in D.C., though you did more than we ever could to make sure the act was passed.” He says the words like he’s proud of his creation. Erik’s mind flashes to Shaw. “Now that we have you, we can start rounding up your followers. And then his. And then every mutant in the country. And we’ll finally be able to definitively answer the question of who the superior race is. Because once I finish with you freaks, there’s only going to be one left.”

Behind him, he feels Lorna reaching out, her subtle manipulation extending past these men, to the elevator shaft.

“Now then. Your hands where I can see them. And put Xavier down. We’re not quite finished with him yet.”

“Yes, you are.”

Before the man can continue, his chest is thrown forward as adamantium claws cut through his back.

Logan is fast. Too fast. He has to have some measure of military training, and Erik spares a thought wondering where Charles dug him up. He cuts through their lines like a well-oiled machine, claws flying fast and furious. At one point, Erik thinks he sees a soldier get a round off and shoot him in the gut, but Logan barely pauses.

Less than a minute later, the men are mincemeat and he looks at them expectantly. “Hank’s waiting.”

Once they’re all safely outside, Erik makes good on his word and tears the place apart.


	14. Chapter 14

Hank isn’t a surgeon, and so the small piece of metal remains fixed in Dad’s neck until they return to the Academy. Fortunately, the number of mutant friends they’ve cultivated does include more than one doctor, and he’s swept off to surgery to see if they can remove it without compromising his spine. Erik waits outside the door with her, subconsciously leaned over with his elbows on his knees, mimicking her posture, staring at the opposite wall. They haven’t said anything real to each other since she destroyed the cars, and quite frankly she doesn’t even know where to start. Horrible, _horrible_ thoughts fly through her mind—all spurred on by things Hank tried to tell her when he feared she was getting too close to Erik. Was she kidnapped? Is she some sort of cuckoo planted in Charles’ nest that’s now expected to fall into line? She hadn’t taken him seriously. Now she wonders. And she sort of hates Hank a bit for putting the thoughts in her head.

Erik seems content to wait her out. But, seriously, screw him. She’d practically felt his anger when she and Dad were in danger. He doesn’t get to play this like he doesn’t care. He has to. Otherwise, why stay at the mansion the entire time Dad’s been gone? Why spend so much time with her before he knew? Because he didn’t. His surprise was too real.

Her hair is slipping out—she and Dad never did figure out how to do a proper French braid, stupid thing—and she reaches back behind her head to pull out the elastic. She runs her fingers through her locks and shakes them free, somewhat comforted when it falls in curtains around her head and hides her from Erik’s eyes.

And yet… He’d taken one look at her… and she’d… and he’d… In that second he’d used his powers, it was like she’d felt a connection she’d never felt before. And Erik…

What the hell is Erik?

She needs to make something clear. “Dad is still Dad, you know.” Regardless of his motives. She's not going to let anyone, especially her own mind, attack him when he can't defend himself.

“I know.” Erik pauses. Nothing like the self-assured man he’d been twenty-four hours ago. “Your mother…” He stops, considering his words. “Her name was…?”

“Susanna,” Lorna supplies.

“Susanna,” Erik breathes, pulling on distant memories. “They told me she died.”

“She did. She got sick on the boat over. And I got shuffled off to an orphanage.” Lorna rubs the inside of her left arm. “Dad found me when I was five.” She doesn’t want to drudge up the mostly-faded memories of where she was before. Dad’s given her a home. Loved her. Protected her. Accepted her. Anything before that doesn’t matter.

The silence is threatening to become uncomfortable.

“Do you have any kids?” The ‘other’ is silent.

“Yes. Twins. They’ll be four soon. Their mother rarely allows me to see them.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

Where do they even go from here? Dad had to know—he _had_ to—that when he gave her Raven’s number, she and Erik would find out about each other. What had he planned? To give her a replacement if something happened to him? It makes her love him and hate him at the same time, for even imagining he could be replaced. And things are so terribly awkward all of a sudden. The air of easiness they finally managed to suss out while playing chess is gone, and they’re left with what?

She’s starting to put bits and pieces of their past together. Small things she’s picked up despite Erik’s recalcitrance.

“Alex said you were going to leave again, once we found him?”

Erik inclines his head slightly. “That had been the plan.”

“And now?”

“I think Charles and I have rather a lot to talk about first.” He swallows uncomfortably and looks at her. “Lorna, if I had known about you…”

He doesn’t seem inclined to finish, but she has to know. “Would it have changed anything?”

He takes her hand. Like Dad did a million times when she was little and needed reassurance. “Yes.”

After that, Lorna breathes a little easier.


	15. Chapter 15

“…And Max the king of all wild things was lonely and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all…”

Erik pauses at the door into Charles’ room. Three weeks, and Charles still shows no signs of returning to consciousness. The doctor who operated on him fears that whatever they did to him may have damaged him permanently, and while she hasn’t openly said it, there’s a change he’ll never wake up. There’s a scar the size of Eric’s thumb on the top of Charles’ spine. It’s enough to make Erik wish Logan hadn’t been quite so efficient.

He and Lorna take turns sitting at Charles’ bedside. Raven came, once, and took one look at Charles before shaking her head in apology and leaving again. Her feelings for her brother have become far and away too complicated for him to properly understand. The others in the Academy rotate through the room at odd hours, some to see Charles, others to see Lorna. Jonothon, Piotr and Jean-Paul especially seem keen on getting her out of the room every so often. Those are the moments when Erik slips in to sit in her chair beside the bed and wait.

The rest of his time is spent with the students and faculty in the school. He finds, surprisingly, he’s missed being a mentor. He’d left it behind as a part of his past when he assumed control of the Brotherhood, choosing instead to be cool and standoffish to his subordinates. But there’s something about being surrounded by so many children that appeals to him. He remembers genuinely smiling when he first taught Sean how to fly, and he’s looking to recapture those deep-entrenched emotions now with the younger generation. ‘Training’ and learning together, to survive a world that doesn’t want or accept them. And despite Hank’s grumblings, it’s going to take a pry bar to remove him from the school.

Lorna looks up and closes her book, an oversized picture book with a blue creature that looks vaguely like Hank dominating the cover.

“I made him read this to me a million times when I was a kid.” She places the book on the bed beside Charles’ arm. “Literally. Especially when I was sick. He’d make me tea—and don’t tell him, but I think the tea he drinks is disgusting—and sit up beside me and read it until his voice was hoarse and he had to switch to telepathy.”

Erik has missed those sorts of moments with her. And perhaps they’ll never have them. When she’d used her powers before him—the first time—it was like closed doors had suddenly opened. Their polarities exactly aligned. Familiar. Kin. Family.

He can’t fault Charles for it fully. According to Lorna, her powers hadn’t manifested until two years ago. Until then, she was all Charles’—no hint that she might be even distantly Erik’s. However, the thought has spurred him to call Magda and ask to see the twins more often. Hopefully she’ll listen. With the Registration Act and the increasing violence with which it’s enforced, however, he finds it more likely that he’ll be forced to the sidelines and miss yet more childhood memories.

Erik settles for something simple. “He was lucky to have you.”

“No. I was lucky to have him.” Lorna stands. “Can you take over for a bit? I feel like I’m going to start growing potatoes in my hair if I don’t have a shower soon.”

Erik nods. They’re getting used to long hours by Charles’ bedside. Their shoulders brush as they pass each other—him coming, her going—and he feels a tingle down his spine. They’re like two magnets, constantly aware of each other. He wonders how he missed it in the weeks leading up to the discovery.

He takes a seat and picks up at the book she’s left behind. It’s a newish copy. Not something carried over from her childhood. Their copy was probably destroyed when the mansion burned down. He entertains the thought of reading it to Charles, but changes his mind and instead sets it aside. Some memories are not meant to be intruded upon, no matter how well-meaning the intrusion.

He uses the doorknob to close the door to the room and leans back in his chair, shifting around so he has the best view of both Charles and the window overlooking the back grounds.

“Where were we?” He taps his fingers against his leg. “Ah, yes. 1971. Not a terrible year. I’m sure you heard about our attack on the U.N. And Kurt was born—a surprise to everyone, let me assure you. Especially Azazel. You’ll love him, I’m sure. He’s very much like you in some respects. Once he figured out how to talk, we couldn’t keep him quiet. And Toad joined the Brotherhood. Likewise, I’m sure you _won’t_ love him. Not at first, anyway. You’ve a soft heart enough to love anyone, given enough time. It’s one of your bad habits.” Erik frowns a bit. “Though I suppose it’s one I benefitted from. For a time.”

Not a stir.

Erik hasn’t put his helmet on again. He’s holding out the hope that maybe Charles will reach out to him, but the idea slips further and further away with every day that passes. He’s tried speaking. Holding Charles’ hand. Silently calling out to him. Another day and he might force Alex, Sean and Hank to let him bring Emma here to search his mind for any sign of life. The other telepaths in the school aren’t nearly powerful enough to break through Charles’ mental wards and she may be their only chance. The last chance. And if she can’t do anything…

He shoves the thought aside and searches his mind for other fragments of memory from that year. “Oh, and I met Essex for the first time. Makes me seem like a saint in comparison. You and I will have to deal with him eventually, I think. Otherwise he’s going to exacerbate things with the humans far worse than I ever could. And I think we both know I can exacerbate things quite substantially.” Essex is a particular brand of evil Erik finds utterly deplorable. Erik campaigns for mutant rights, because he knows what it is to be subjugated and maligned. Essex just wants to make other people suffer.

He twines his fingers through Charles. He always ends up reaching for Charles’ hand without conscious thought, but once they touch, it’s hard for him to let go. His fingers are warm and familiar. It’s part of why Erik hasn’t lost hope that Charles will eventually wake.

As they touch, a jolt runs through him. Up his arm and through his entire body. He almost recoils, but tightens his hold instead, forcing him to remain in place. It’s not painful, just jarring. Like a floodplain sweeping through his mind, seeking out familiar pathways and corners.

 _Charles_?

There’s no proper response, but a sweeping feeling of contentment. Trust. Like Charles is struggling to find a way out of whatever shuttered cage they’ve forced him into and small bits and pieces of himself are creeping through.

“Fight it, Charles. Whatever they did. You’ve people waiting for you.” He tenses, suddenly nervous. “I’m waiting for you.”

Clenching Charles’ hand tight enough to bruise, Erik leans back in his seat and silently contemplates his feelings regarding Charles’ presence in his mind once again.

*

Two days later, Erik is—somewhat amusingly—helping Sean with his group of new fliers when he feels a shudder of awareness prickle at the edge of his consciousness.

 _Erik_?

He doesn’t drop the student he’s levitating, though it’s a close thing. Instead, he sticks him on the roof and takes off towards Charles’ room. He sags against the doorframe when he sees Charles sitting up in bed, his back supported by Lorna.

Despite Erik’s closeness the past few weeks, Charles seems surprised to see him. They don’t say anything to each other for a moment, and Erik spares a second to wonder if this moment of unsettling silence will spark another fourteen year rift between them.

Then Charles smiles. And it’s dazzling. “Erik.”


	16. Chapter 16

Every day for the week following his recovery, Lorna insists on pouring tea down his throat and staying close to his side. He isn’t ready for the steady stream of ‘Erik, Erik, Erik’ she plies him with, but he certainly doesn’t object, even though each time she says his name it’s a slight stab to his heart, knowing she may decide to leave with him when he goes. Because despite the fact neither of them call him on it, he knows they know. It’s in every shared glance. Or whenever they look his way. Truth be told, it’s somewhat disconcerting having two identical pairs of eyes fixated entirely on him.

Erik gives him a week to recover before approaching him about certain…considerations Charles neglected to provide him over the past two years. Charles can sense it brewing beneath the surface, but the simple joy he feels at having the other man nearby overrides everything else. Charles deserves everything Erik is preparing to throw at him, he knows that. But the week is so blissfully devoid of harsh words and old hurts that he can almost forget the encroaching storm.

Almost.

It’s almost a relief when it hits. Lorna ensconces herself with Jono, Piotr and Jean-Paul for a film, and Erik finally takes the opportunity to seek him out. Alone. Ostensibly to flay him alive. Hopefully only verbally.

There’s no preamble. No build up. Erik walks into Charles’ room, shuts and locks the door behind him, and crosses his arms over his chest. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

He’s rehearsed this argument a thousand times in his head over the past few years, but all his carefully-considered words fall away now he’s faced with Erik in person.

“Ninety-nine percent of my reasons are selfish,” Charles tells him. It’s as much honesty as he offer.

“Are there actually any unselfish ones?” Erik demands. The words sting, but Charles more than deserves them.

“Not one you won’t hate me for.”

“Enlighten me, then, Charles. Because I don’t hate you quite yet and I’m interested to see what else you’re hiding.”

“Erik,” Charles sighs. “I didn’t know. Not for nine years. I raised her as mine. Shared my values and beliefs with her. Not yours. And when I realized, all I could think was how much it had hurt when you stopped wanting me and how much I wanted to save her from ever feeling that way.” Charles wants to pace and hates that he can’t. “She’s my child. And I love her. All the rest of my selfish reasons are all bound up in that and if you want to hate me for it then go right ahead.”

Silence follows on the tail of his words. Charles has been staying out of Erik’s mind—he’s removed his helmet, and Charles doesn’t want to do anything to compromise their new, tentative peace—and yet the desire to glance at even Erik’s surface thoughts hit him hard enough his hands shake. He folds them in his lap and clenches his fingers together to stop himself from fidgeting.

Erik clenches his hands into fists and, with measured steps, walks across the remaining distance between them. “You’re an idiot, Charles.”

“Yes.”

“…” Erik’s jaw clenches. “I stopped agreeing with you. I never stopped wanting you.”

Charles’ heart stops a moment. It’s the only explanation for the sudden squeezing in his chest. And he cannot for the life of him think of a single thing to say.

“I think your—my— _our_ daughter is incredible. And I wouldn’t have been capable of giving her a real home, like you have. But I had a right to know. The moment you did. The moment you _suspected_. Because it was one thing to know I was fighting for our people, but it’s entirely different to know I’m fighting for our family.” Erik looses a long breath.

“I’ve come to appreciate the differences myself,” Charles admits.

It’s been impossible to miss the aura of fear hanging around the Academy, everyone bracing for the worst when it comes to the Registration Act. Or Jean-Paul’s missing hair, from when they shaved his head upon imprisoning him in the camp. And it’s been one thing to insist they try to live peacefully alongside humanity. It’s something entirely different to know humanity is threatening his child. He would fight to the death for her. And it may eventually come to that.

He still fervently believes that most of humanity are good people. But with the rising violence against mutants now the Act has passed, it’s harder to remember.

“But you can’t tell me it would have stopped you from fighting. It’s what you do, Erik. You fight for what you believe in. What you love. And it’s something I lo—… admire about you. Truly it is. But tell me what difference it would have made in her life had you known, save forcing her to pick between us.”

“I can’t answer that, Charles. But I would have liked to make the decision for myself.”

“I’m sorry.” He tries to pour as much genuine sincerity into the apology as possible. There’s nothing he can do to return the last two years to Erik—the last sixteen years—but hopefully he can be forgiven. Someday.

Erik looks at him, momentarily unrelenting, until he finally nods. It’s not complete forgiveness. Not yet. But it’s something. “Any other secrets you’ve been keeping?”

Charles coughs out a half-laugh. “She’s terrible at German. I tried to teach her for years until she begged me to help her learn French instead.”

The other man’s lips twitch in a half-smile. “Sordid, indeed.”

He needs to ask when Erik plans to leave; needs know how much time he’ll have to buffer himself against another broken heart. Distance has been his friend. And knowing Erik was close enough to touch—knowing he’s aware of Lorna’s existence—and having him leave again anyway might kill him.

“Does it always have to be black and white between us? You versus me? Father versus father?” He doesn’t mean to ask the question, but it slips out anyway. Erik raises an eyebrow. “Especially now that a real war has started, and we can finally stop crusading for our own individual causes. Your methods couldn’t stop this, and mine were certainly ineffective. It seems we’re more successful when we collaborate. Even accidentally.” Charles musters up a smile. “As we have living proof.”

Erik’s lips twitch. It’s almost a smile. “What are you suggesting?”

“I wanted the school to be a safe haven. And it was. And more mutants than ever need the refuge and protection we can provide.” Charles takes Erik’s hand. Erik doesn’t pull away, and the first stirrings of real hope well up in Charles’ stomach. “And they need to be able to turn to someone unafraid to fight for them, until the world comes to its senses and realizes that we can live together without destroying each other.”

“And if it never does?”

“Then at least…at least we’ll have each other. And anything we manage to build.”

Erik’s eyebrow nocks slightly. “It sounds dangerously like we’ve begun to want the same thing.”

“Yes, my friend. I think we finally do.”

*

Erik does leave, but only to collect the rest of the Brotherhood. Charles is expecting there to be more than five members, but it seems to be all there is. Before he leaves, Lorna stops him in the driveway. They share a few short words—Charles’ doesn’t pry, though he watches—and a shorter embrace. He has yet to have a conversation with Lorna about recent revelations, but he thinks that can wait.

Lorna rejoins him at the door to watch Erik drive his—surprisingly non-pristine—Cadillac away.

“Don’t go,” Lorna murmurs. “I’ll eat you up, I love you so.”

Charles takes her hand. “He’ll be back.”

“Doesn’t make it easier.”

No, it doesn’t. Not when there are still so many unanswered questions and unspoken promises waiting to be filled. But, for the first time in forever, he’s begun to trust Erik again. Begun to want him again. And he has to hold onto the belief that Erik wants the same.

“I know.”

They return inside. There’s still a small part missing in his heart. He and Erik have made each other no promises. Or indeed, even brought up their past. But even knowing he’ll be close soothes an ever-present ache he’s hadn’t noticed until suddenly faced with his absence.


	17. Epilogue

When Erik comes back, it’s with a handful of other mutants in tow and determined to teach everyone in the school how to protect themselves and each other in what everyone’s starting to refer to as ‘The War.’ For the first while, he seems to be avoiding her father, until they finally have a discussion which causes half the light fixtures in the surrounding corridors to bend and twist out of shape and leave the room on the same page.

They don’t conscript everyone into a mutant army or anything. For most of the residents, it’s business as normal. But a bunch of them end up in a ‘simulated training center’ (dubbed ‘The Danger Room’ by Scott and Jean) trying not to get pulverized by the numerous traps and training exercises Dad and Erik think up. The two of them put together are a menace.

Once they’ve all got the basics down, Erik breaks them into teams. Apparently he decides not to mess with a good thing, and Lorna stays with Piotr, Jono and J.P. They’re pretty much a big deal, but Erik works them harder than any other team in the place. Dad has made basic self-defense training a staple in the school since he took on his first students, but Erik is straight up _vicious_. Like, she gets it. He doesn’t want any of them to get hurt because they weren’t prepared. But seriously. He’s borderline crazy. At night, Lorna goes back to her room and collapses without showering, tucking herself into bed and nursing her bruises until she feels less like a little kid playing at action hero and a bit more like a normal person.

There’s debate about a team name. The people who’ve been following Magneto for years are stuck on keeping ‘The Brotherhood’ but a lot of the others think that keeping the name associated with a terrorist organization is a bad idea. Sean and Alex seem fond of the ‘X-Men.’ It seems like an in-joke and gets shot down as soon as someone mentions the potential association with porn. So right now, they’re just a nameless group of mutants out to protect the little guy.

It feels fantastic. Painful, but fantastic.

Erik and Dad are spending a lot of time together, too. Like they’re trying to make up for the years apart. Dad’s never been this close to anyone. Ever. It’s sweet, but weirding her out. Not that Dad doesn’t deserve friends, because he’s pretty much the most awesome person Lorna knows, it’s just that she’s so used to him being alone. Now it’s him alone with Eric, a chessboard and constant planning for possibilities which aren’t even registering in her mind.

It gets worst the day she accidentally walks in on them kissing.

They break away when she walks into the room—even though it’s already too late to play innocent—and she can’t help but stare for a second.

“Okay,” she starts slowly, “obviously when Hank referred to you as ‘old friends,’ he forgot the quotation marks.”

Dad looks nervous but happy. Erik unrepentant and smug. How is this her life? Not that it’s a bad thing. It’s just that she now understands every cliché about walking in on your parents and being emotionally scarred. It’s claw-her-eyes-out-terrible. And to add insult to injury she owes Jono ten bucks.

But Erik’s slotting himself into their lives like an addition to a family portrait, a paintbrush easily weaving him into the space previously occupied by only her father and her. And despite it all, she sort of loves him. And she doesn’t want Dad to be alone anymore.

“I’ll come back later.”

Erik’s smile turns positively shark-like. “Good idea.”

Dad waves at her sheepishly, but he’s smiling. She leaves them to—… She leaves them. And vows to knock next time she needs something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who commented and left a kudo. They've meant a lot to me - even if I am terrible at replying to them. This has really been a fun fic for me to write. And I'll be honest, there may be a sequel in the works - I don't think the portrait is quite done yet.


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